The Future Primaeval

The fundamental imperative of the state, at least from the perspective of the state, is to maintain sufficient political hegemony, such that no subset of society »

Plato once said, “One of the penalties of refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.” Actually, that’s »

Absolutism is the idea that conflict is bad, that conflict is reliably caused by division of power, therefore division of power is bad, therefore decisive power »

One of the more interesting documents I have come across recently is the 1982 Interview of Norman Dodd by Edward Griffin, where Dodd goes into his »

The Overton Window and Political Control The Overton Window is a concept in political sociology referring to the range of acceptable opinions that can be held »

Suppose you want to understand human society. You should; you're in one! What I mean by "understanding" is a strong enough independent understanding of the dynamics »

The dominance of politics over science has serious implications for future technological projects, such as artificial intelligence. To tackle the nexus of AI and politics, let’ »

I once worked with a doctor who spent the entire morning complaining about the cost of 30k Montessori preschool for his two kids, not to mention »

What does is mean to say that “politics is upstream of science”? My last article made this case with several historical examples: Lysenkoism, Deutsche Physik, and »

The other day some terrorist in France ran a trailer truck through a crowd for a mile or so, killing about 80 people. That's pretty big, »

When we think about matters relating to the operation of society - what is right and wrong, how society works, what we should do to improve »

Being a human is great, except that your lifespan is so short. Just as you start figuring things out, you die. Vampires don’t have this »

The other day I was trying to break down some of our theories of power interactions within empires to simpler and more mechanical dynamics that would »

Rudyard Kipling writes, in the second jungle book: Just to give you an idea of the immense variety of the Jungle Law, I have translated into »

Speak the truth, even if your voice trembles. -common saying The fact is, sometimes the right thing to do is stay quiet when everyone else is »

Men and women are different. These differences are significant to the function of social groups. There are many examples of social groups, especially in politics and »

Lots of people are trying to save the world nowadays, but their efforts rely on maintaining a civilization that is advanced, wealthy, and increasingly complex. This »

David Graeber wrote a piece On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs which niggled at me for a long time. On one hand, anyone who has worked »

Back in the 60s, one group of protesters tried a novel strategy to attack the big banks that they hated. They distributed flyers around town telling »

In the West in the 21st century, things basically work and we have it pretty good. We are for the most part basically good people, fed, »

I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the »

Mild spoilers for Submission follow. Halfway through the novel Submission, the narrator’s parents die in quick succession, an event that's all the more devastating for »

[This occasionally comes up, so I thought I'd explain it, but it's not particularly important.] Much woo has been spilled over Godel's incompleteness theorem. Playing a »

A friend and I analyzed doctors thus: There are two functions of a doctor: Expert Mechanic. Uses superior domain knowledge to actually repair damage to your »

The ancients who wished to illustrate illustrious virtue throughout the Kingdom, first ordered well their own states. Wishing to order well their states, they first regulated »

When I visited Singapore a few years ago, I kept noticing novel bits of social technology that managed to solve problems that I didn’t even »

In one graph: The world is getting better every year, they tell us. Fewer people dying in war, poverty lifting, education increasing, and most importantly, monotonic »

When I was towards the end of medical school, I had a bout of last minute questioning about my choice of specialty. I had put in »

"Postrationalism" is our reaction against some of the silliness of modern conceptions of "rationality", while keeping the strong emphasis on correct thinking, skeptical evidence-based inquiry, and »

Apparently, this is what Mormons actually believe. It's pretty weird. On the other hand: This is the Mormon temple in Oakland. It's not really my kind »

As steel sharpeneth steel, so one man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend. – Proverbs 27:17 There’s a common romantic image of the lone genius »

If we speak in broad strokes and ignore fuzzy edge cases, we can divide people into three different levels of social agency throughout history and across »

Gregory Clark is perhaps best known for his A Farewell To Alms, but he also has a newer pun-based title - The Son Also Rises. The »

The past, it’s said, is a foreign country. If so, that country lies firmly in the third world. Past societies were much poorer than ours, »

These are the official population projections. My understanding of Africa is not great, but I don't think they're going to get away with this without running »

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance »

I think one of the major errors of modern Western thought is the idea that there are dogmatic principles that can apply to every circumstance. "Women »

After us, the people of our race will wear garments of gold; they will eat sweet, greasy food, ride splendid coursers, and hold in their arms »

Science and the Press are broken. Somehow politics has crept in and distorted what they say and what they teach and what we are allowed to »

In his "Gentle Introduction, Part 9a", Mencius Moldbug introduces a neat little political methodology he calls "Passivism", and a Procedure to replace the current political machinery, »

"Walt Disney wanted to be frozen," Bob Nelson says, as casually as if he were talking about municipal bonds. "Lots of people think that he was, »

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's work is excellent. There's one poem of his, "The Ladder of St. Augustine", that I find particularly compelling: Saint Augustine! well hast thou »

A few months ago I was talking to some divinity school students, many of whom were on track to being ordained Methodist ministers. I’m always »

Back in 2010 or so, I used to hang out at /r/anarchism on Reddit. It was a neat place to talk about how different strains »

Sometimes people think of politics as this far-away thing that's about elections and Democrats and Republicans. They imagine that if they simply don't talk about elections »

I'm afraid I don't have a source, but these are allegedly headlines from the French Newspaper "Moniteur" in March of 1815, on the subject of Napoleon's »

Julia Galef, a prominent member of the "Rationality" community, responded in one of her videos a while ago to an argument very like my Structured Argument »

I’ve never been a huge anime fan, but Death Note is the one show that I’ve really enjoyed. The intricate plot can be simplified »

There’s a small movement of personal finance bloggers who argue that a lot of people should be retiring early – think 35 or 40 rather than »

1. When people talk about politics, they generally fall into one of three groups. The first and by far the largest group basically argues “more good »

One of the facts that I like to surprise people with is that in many East Asian countries, there are no such things as ghettos. Oh, »

The scene is Upper Monarch Lake, ten thousand feet up in the mountains of the Sequoia National Park in California. If you got here, you climbed »

Every great company is unique, but there are a few things that every business must get right at the beginning . I stress this so often that »

An argument for traditions: The space of possible human cultural practices is large. The subspace of 1 which is well tuned, robust, compatible with human flourishing, »

The Allais Paradox is a result in behavioural psychology that shows that humans apparently do not behave in accordance with expected utility theory. Specifically, according to »

It has not been apparent until now, but this is actually a group blog, composed of a small group of people with similar ideas which are »

At my previous job, I worked with an interesting man. He was not all that intellectual or cultured, but there were a few key facts that »

Glorious Chinese propaganda. Makes me want to treat my elders well and live a virtuous life. »