Category: Decline and fall

Today’s quote

Grim:

The good argument in favor of billionaires — trillionaires, now — is that one person can make a decision about how to deploy substantial capital in efficient ways that a government, a corporation, or a committee can never. Musk is building space rockets and tunneling equipment that could build a Mars colony because he wants to, not because of fiduciary duty or because spreadsheets suggest it is wise. We are lucky that the world’s richest man loves Buck Rogers rather than Karl Marx.

Today’s quote: Remarks on the Remarks on the Seventh Annual Report of ….

Joseph Moore:

… the one core belief of the Puritans, that which survived any number of changes to mere theological and moral beliefs, is that they, the enlightened and holy, should be in charge. Starting with the University they founded within a decade of establishing their first town, the Pilgrims asserted what to them was the obvious and certain truth: they had a bead on things, anyone who disagreed was stupid or evil. It was their right and duty to rule. The theology changed from Calvinism to Unitarianism to Marxism and beyond, but the core belief in their superior understanding survived all such superficial changes.

Today’s quote

Ross Grossman on Ozempic:

The modern environment floods us with things designed to hijack our reward systems. Junk food engineered for maximum craveability. Social media designed for maximum addiction. Pornography available in infinite variety. Gambling apps in your pocket. The world has become a casino that follows you everywhere, and the house always wins.

Maybe pharmacologically dampening those circuits is reasonable adaptation.

Maybe it’s surrender.

Maybe — and I’m not sure I’m ready to say this out loud — it’s the beginning of a future where we chemically modify our capacity to want things because we’ve built a world with too many things to want—and we’ve decided it’s easier to fix the people than fix the world.

Today’s quote

Stolen Laughter:

I herded the church kids into the art room so they could play together. Twenty minutes later, I discovered them staring in complete silence at their phones.

The only kid without a phone was mine. She was drawing a picture of her cat surrounded by cat toys, colorful blankets, and bowls.

This is a new thing, by the way. I vividly remember kids playing and running around in the art room. It’s like in that fairy tale where an evil magician stole the children’s laughter.

Gyneco-Obstetric Algebraic Didactics and Post-Partum Group Theory

According to a recently published paper,

A case study with pregnant mathematicians and aspiring gynecologists demonstrates that integrating the Fibonacci sequence into labor progression charts induces spontaneous appreciation for abstract algebra and mild cravings for prime numbers. These findings challenge the traditional boundaries between prenatal care and set theory, suggesting that mathematical didactics and obstetric gynecology, when merged, can birth new paradigms in both fields. Further research is encouraged, especially in the context of cesarean matrices and post-partum group theory.

(Via Eugene Volokh.)

Not quite as impactful as Alan Sokal’s classic paper, perhaps, but much more efficiently created. As the author notes, “All procedures followed the principles of academic transparency and surreal humor.”

Hmm …

Ted Gioia:

After three decades of total connectivity, here’s where we stand:

  • Four movie studios still control Hollywood.
  • Four subscription platforms account for two-thirds of home movie streaming.
  • Three major record labels own most of the hit songs.
  • Five publishers account for 80% of the US book market.
  • Just one company controls 60% plus of the US audiobook business.
  • Etc. etc.

It may not be a coincidence that I don’t watch recent movies either in theatres or online, don’t stream music or listen to radio, seldom read recent books, or listen to audiobooks. If Gioia’s schoolbus plunges off a cliff, it would be a net gain for civilization.1

Quote of the day

Severian:

As we say around here, infinite Information Velocity effectively = zero IV. You have access to all the information, instantly… but it’s all AI slop and none of it can be trusted, not least because AI is just Reddit but faster (probably trained on Reddit).

And actually this is great from a Dissident perspective. In a world of nothing but AI slop, what can you trust? Nothing but what is told to you by a real person, whom you know well, with an ironclad rep for honestly. The endpoint of Globalization is, as it turns out, extreme localism.