Linkpost May

An aMayzing linkpost

First order of business: I’ll be at Manifest! Come say hi! I look like this (tall, dark, and handsome).

(I’m the one on the left in the light blue shirt, though my friend who is on the right will also be there—say hi to him too because he’s similarly cool).

I’ve had some interesting conversations on YouTube recently. I spoke, most excitingly, with the leading expert on fine-tuning in the world (in my view!), Robin Collins! He called me “very sharp” and thought my theodicy was very interesting. You can also see Collins demolishing internet personality Tom Jump in these two videos! He also had a fun interview with Brian Auten where he crushes Stenger, among other things. Also on my YouTube channel, I interviewed Lydia McGrew and chatted with various others like Lance Bush, a bunch of random people, and Ben Watkins.

I appeared on two podcasts: Hanania’s and a fellow called Walt Bismarck’s (who I recently beefed with, but am now a bit bored of), as well as Paul Bali’s YouTube channel. All were good chats. Weird that the two biggest people who have hosted me are pretty far right, seeing as I’m not far right at all! If any left-wing people want to have me on—cough, cough Matthew Yglesias—be my guest!

I also appeared on the YouTube channel of a guy named Grayson to talk about theism. I don’t think I did super well here, especially explaining why we should apply Bayesian reasoning to even the initial conditions of the universe (it’s a hard thing to explain—if anyone has advice on how to explain it well, let me know), but it was a good conversation. Grayson was nice though, and interesting to chat with.

Great debate I watched recently between Gaven Kerr and Joe Schmid! It’s about the de ente argument. The De Ente argument is a weird one—it’s one of those arguments of the form “here, accept 55 precepts of controversial Thomistic metaphysics, and then we can show that God exists.”

I published an article for Quillette arguing against the insanely dumb lab meat bans of Rob Desanctimonious, endorsed by Fetterman.

My friend Connor Jennings has a great new substack—for a representative example of the awesomeness, see this article about lab meat.

Dan Williams shoots down misinformation surrounding misinformation.

Tracing Woodgrains has stopped working for Blocked and Reported, the greatest podcast on the internet. He wrote a hilarious and touching article reflecting on this.

Pruss is a thirder :). He also did a cool interview with the Thomistic Institute.

Hanania had a very interesting conversation with Briana Wu. Prior to that I had a low opinion of her, but now, I’m a tentative fan.

You can read Anselm’s Proslogion online. It’s pretty good.

Hilarious video!

Nick Bostrom’s book Anthropic Bias is available online. So’s Carlsmith’s series on anthropics.

Danny Fishman’s song titled simply Train Song is wonderful. It’s about (I think?) moving on from a fraught relationship. Some of the lyrics:

Well I tried to make you love me
Now I'll try to let you go
But when the train pulls through the station
And that whistle starts to blow

Well I can't help but remember
That one story that you told
'Bout how you rearranged the furniture
When you were just a few years old

And I know this time there's no good reason
Left for me to stay
But if these trains are meant for leavin'
Why am I standing at the gate?

(My blog is dry and analytical—posting song lyrics is my only chance for artistic expression (aside from my arguments for the self-indication assumption which are often described as works of supreme beauty)).

Richard Chappell proposes a non-fungible hedonism! It’s an interesting variant on hedonism about well-being. Worth thinking about.

Take the giving what we can pledge! You can give 10% of your income to effective charities and save a bunch of lives!

Aaron Sibarium’s reporting for the Washington Free Beacon is nuts! For example: A Yale Professor Wrote an Op-Ed About Anti-Semitism on Campus. The University Spent Over a Year Investigating Him, 'A Failed Medical School': How Racial Preferences, Supposedly Outlawed in California, Have Persisted at UCLA, and MIT Hired Six New Diversity Deans. Two of Them Are Serial Plagiarists, Complaint Alleges. Unlike LibsofTikTok, for example, Sibarium’s stuff is actually well-researched!

Scott explains one reason why education is a failure: absent repeatedly rehearing about some information, we simply forget about it.

Alex Nowrasteh is very informed on the topic of immigration. Here he explains why Thomas Sowell is wrong about it.

A few days ago, I wondered whether I was the biggest person on substack below the age of 21. Turns out I’m not :(—I’ve been outdone by some fellow named Austin Scholar. His stuff is pretty good, though.

The short story Hell Is the Absence of God is quite haunting but makes for an interesting read. It also refutes Calvinism.

Scott explains convincingly why Lyman’s criticisms of effective altruism are totally wrong. Arguing with critics of effective altruism is annoying sometimes because all the criticisms involve them saying implausible, obviously false things, all to uproarious applause.

Regan defends the term postmodern right. It’s a good term!

This guy Harry Mack is a super impressive free-style rapper. I’m not a big fan of rap generally, but he’s incredibly impressive—able to just rhyme words immediately very quickly without any breaks in fluency.

My friend Ruby wrote an article about how bad factory farming is. Worth a read.

John Psmith’s review of Einstein’s unification makes it clear that Einstein had an interesting philosophy of science—he thought elegance was a better guide to truth than finding things that matched the experimental data. He had a weirdly blase attitude toward fitting the experimental data and even suggested that he’d keep believing his theory if it was falsified by experiment (he’d reject the experiment).

Sam Kriss has an engaging article about the world’s oldest hatred. Hint: it wasn’t of the Jews, contrary to the popular expression.

Dustin Crummett, my favorite Christian philosopher, soundly outargues Louise Anthony in a pretty bizarre debate.

Vaishnav Sunil argues that the right-wing position on Israel is correct for standard game theory reasons. I think that this is completely the wrong way to think about the conflict for reasons I’ll probably explain at some point, but for now, here’s the thought-provoking piece.

The Mandelbrot set is pretty crazy.

My friend Apologetics Squared has made a 38-part video series explaining the argument for God from psychophysical harmony and rebutting objections. It’s a good watch—very convincing.

Theologian David Bentley Hart is famous for his creative insults. Here’s a compilation of the best ones.

Rabbi Tovia Singer is a great debater and efficiently steamrolls William Lane Craig.

Very cool article by Eliezer about E.T. Jaynes and the level above one’s own. It’s a good concept: there are some people who are just a level above yours, when it comes to their ability to think through some topic. The level above yours is the one at which you can understand the brilliance of what’s happening but you can’t do it yourself.

Sam Kriss and Curtis Yarvin had an entertaining beef, ending with Yarvin doing the typical Yarvin thing of waffling incoherently.

Ed Witten’s intellect is terrifying, apparently. Might be the smartest living person, the Von Neumann of our time.

Alexander Pruss thinks that all infinites might be of the same size! Weird!

Scott has an interesting review of a book about in psychology, when people are questioned, them keep claiming to be possessed by demons. Alternative explanation: people are possessed by demons. :)

In light of some…recent events…here’s a post of Huemer’s talking about the general reliability of jury trials:

Nevertheless, the above is still a pretty good system for most cases. Here is how this is better than the opinions of media pundits:

1. The jury listens to the evidence. They’re forced to sit there the whole time. Media pundits, by contrast, listen to 30-second soundbites from other media pundits before spouting off their own uninformed opinions. If you’re under the impression that the news reports you see are based on diligent and honest investigation, you’re living in a fantasy land. Think of the media rather as high school students throwing together their book reports at the last minute based on what other kids told them, based on the cover of the book.

2. The jury is relatively impartial. They don’t have any self-interested incentives either to convict or to acquit – e.g., they don’t stand to make or lose money depending on how they find. Media pundits, by contrast, are part of a business based on capturing attention and selling it to advertisers. If their story captures attention, they make money. If not, then not. Most media outlets also play to an audience with a specific ideological orientation.

3. The jury verdict has to be unanimous. 12 ordinary people, more or less randomly selected, have to agree. By contrast, individual media pundits can just say whatever they feel like. Furthermore, media pundits are not ordinary people; they are selected for attracting attention, pushing people’s emotional buttons, etc.

#1 is the most important point. If you disagree with a verdict, but you did not watch the trial, then the most likely explanation for your disagreement with the jury is that they heard the evidence and you did not.

That was certainly the case with the Rittenhouse trial. The jurors weren’t a bunch of white supremacists. (Think how unlikely it would be to find 12 white supremacists, especially with prosecution lawyers on the watch to exclude anyone with pro-defendant biases.) They were random, ordinary people doing their job as jurors. They found Rittenhouse not guilty because that’s what the evidence – the real evidence, not the news media inventions – dictated.

No views on the Trump verdict, just a good general heuristic.