Linkpost September
Keep your government hands off my farm subsidies?
Glenn over at the blog United States of Exception (good title) has been writing some exceptionally good (pun intended) articles. Some of the best are Keep Your Government Hands Off My Farm Subsidies, Should Our Priors Make Us Doubt Ethical Veganism?, and The Tragedy of "Tragedy of Great Power Politics" Politics.
I may have linked this before, but I reread it recently, and oh boy is it a great paper. Olum quite conclusively demonstrates that SIA is the right view, providing a diverse array of extremely powerful arguments.
Are you annoyed by the pretensions of much of literature and the bizarre literary contortions employed so that people can market their books as Very Serious Literature? So is B.R. Myers—and he has a hilariously devastating essay criticizing modern literature’s unreadability. For a briefer summary, see Arjun’s post on it (that’s how I found it originally).
I have a YouTube channel. Some interesting recent videos include my talk with Pat Flynn (substack here) about God, my debate with Godless Engineer about God (that one was a bit painful), my chat with James Fodor about fine-tuning, and the debate I hosted between James Fodor and Robin Collins.
Speaking of Flynn, his blog is excellent. He’s a classical theist and wrote a great book on the existence of God. His conversation with the saintly Gavin Ortlund and article on God’s simplicity were particularly excellent.
Alex Nowrasteh, one of the best immigration proponents, debated Tucker Carlson twice. These were among the most brutal pwnings I’ve ever seen. Tucker really had nothing and Nowrasteh had convincing rebuttals to all of his talking points.
Philip, a friend of mine, has an excellent article defending price gouging—and more substack articles to come!
Sam Kriss wrote an article about the death of his best friend. Very heartbreaking and worth reading.
Scott Alexander’s post upon returning to substack is wonderful. He reflects on why he shut down his old blog, the NYT doxxing, and so on, all delightfully combining with the lyrics to the song still alive.
Lux Alptraum writes a fascinating piece about people who committed real me too wrongs, and whether we can, as a culture, ever forgive them.
When people talk about sexual harassment, they talk almost exclusively about men harassing women. But a lot of harassment is done by women to men—don’t believe me, read the post? So is this justified? Scott argues no.
Speaking of Scott, I was laughing out loud reading his series of articles on search terms that brought people to the blog—apparently a bunch of people searched for Indian porn and accidentally found the anti-neo-reactionary FAQ (which I’m sure, they found to be a welcome substitute). For similar hilarity, see Scott’s hardball questions for the next debate.
Okay, I realize this is a lot of Scott links, but I’ve been going through the old slate star codex archives. His recent article about his babies contains truly off-the-charts hilarity and cuteness.
…more Scott links, this book review of Dominion is excellent. The ending is particularly haunting:
In a recently released autobiography, Noem proudly admits to killing her 14 month old puppy. She said that the dog wasn’t a good hunter, wasn’t a good listener, and that it attacked some of her neighbor’s chickens. So, naturally, she took it out back and shot it in the head. Isn’t that the tough love this country needs? Doesn't that show good leadership instincts and an ability to make hard choices?
The public did not think so. When the story made the news, there was considerable outrage from the right and left alike. Rarely does a story so cleanly unite people on both sides of the political aisle. Once a longshot GOP vice presidential candidate, Noem’s political star has dimmed. Bragging about carrying out a mafia-style killing of your own puppy will have that effect.
The average person viewed the act as one of those unequivocal evils that Scully talks about, a moment “when you do not need doctrines, when even rights become irrelevant, when life demands some basic response of fellow-feeling and mercy and love.” What a fine kumbaya moment for humanity. Look at us all, recognizing that it’s just not right to treat our fellow creatures with such disdain.
Except if you read beyond the headlines, you find out that she decided to kill one of her goats right after the dog. And it was the goat who didn’t die with one shot. He had to lay on the ground in agony while Noem went back to her car to get another bullet.
The dog was named Cricket. The goat had no name. It was just another machine on the farm.
Philosopher Daniel Rubio started a substack—here’s a recent article of his that’s especially good. Rubio has weird views on things, but is unbelievably smart, and gets the obvious things (e.g. the desirability of effective altruism) right that many others get wrong.
One of my favorite blogs on the internet is Aron Wall’s. Wall is a lecturer at Cambridge in theoretical physics. Wall is similar to Scott Alexander, in that he’s clear, clever, methodical, and excellent at writing on a wide range of topics, all the while exuding compassion and decency. Some of my favorite articles of his include The Achievement Gap, God of the Gaps, his fundamental reality index, Just how certain can we be?, Are Bad Historians in Danger of Hellfire?, and Will the real
godGod please stand up?.Two great songs I’ve discovered recently, both excellent: Dandelions and Forever Young. I particularly like the chorus to Dandelions:
'Cause I'm in a field of dandelions
Wishing on every one that you'd be mine, mine
And I see forever in your eyes
I feel okay when I see you smile, smileRichard Hanania interviewed the fascinating Dennis McCarthy, who argues that Shakespeare’s plays were largely repurposed from earlier works. McCarthy has lots of other interesting substack articles.
Daniel Kokotajlo completely wrecks compartmentalized conditionalization. CC is finished!
Plasmablogging, another newish (original had a typo and said Jewish) substacker with an excellent blog, has some great articles, but my favorite is, of course, the one defending the self-indication assumption.
Joe Schmid is an impressively gifted young philosopher who, despite being very early in grad school, has seventeen publications and a book. He’s blowing me out of the water! He also has a wonderful YouTube channel and blog—this recent post was especially devastating.
There are lots of interviews with Bobby Fischer online—he’s a captivating figure. Too bad he went crazy later. Magnus Carlsen’s 60 minutes interview is similarly compelling.
Andrew Rofe’s Introduction To The Composition of the Pentateuch was particularly compelling. It makes the case—clearly and convincingly—for the documentary hypothesis or something like it, and argues for particular datings of the sources.
Inverse Florida has an excellent substack—dedicated mostly to complaining about leftists.
Alexander Pruss asks: why so few dimensions? It’s an interesting question, and his answers are interesting. Another fascinating article of his is his recent one about uncertain guilt.
Connor Jennings is a friend of mine with an excellent blog. Some particularly good articles of his are: We Won't Solve Bigotry by Insulting Each Other, Being Callous to Animals isn't Manly, and Selfish Reasons To Want Lab Grown Meat. Jennings both writes about important topics and writes incredibly well, making his blog a joy to read.
Not a link, but I have another paper that got accepted for publication—this time at Utilitas. Should be out soon. In this one, I argue against the procreation asymmetry. The procreation asymmetry—according to which there’s nothing good about creating a person with a good life—reminds me of a statement by Rob Koons about materialism, that it “is a view that has no very compelling argument in its favor and that is confronted with very powerful objections to which nothing even approaching an adequate response has been offered.”
Mike Titelbaum has a very convincing paper in which he argues that in the sleeping beauty problem, double halfers have to think that unflipped coins have a more than 50% probability of coming up heads. Halfing is finished!
Thanks for the share! Appreciate it, man 🤜🤛
Especially for ethanol production!