Linkpost September

Glenn from the blog United States of Exception (good title) has written some exceptionally good (pun intended) articles. Some of the best are Keep your government hands off my agricultural subsidies. Should our ancestors make us doubt ethical veganism? And The Tragedy of the “Tragedy of Great Power Politics” Politics.

I may have linked this before, but I recently re-read it and boy oh boy is it a great article. Olum makes a very convincing case that SIA is the right view, using a diverse range of extremely powerful arguments.

Are you irritated by the pretensions of much literature and the bizarre literary contortions used to get people to sell their books as Very Serious Literature? BR Myers is too, and he has a hilariously scathing essay criticizing the unreadability of modern literature. For a shorter summary, see Arjun’s post on it (that’s how I originally thought it was).

I have a YouTube channel. Some interesting recent videos include my conversation 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 is a classical theist and wrote a great book on the existence of God. His conversation with Saint Gavin Ortlund and article on God’s simplicity were particularly excellent.

Alex Nowrasteh, one of the best immigration advocates, debated Tucker Carlson twice. It was some of the most brutal pwnings I have ever seen. Tucker had absolutely nothing and Nowrasteh had compelling refutations of all his talking points.

Philip, a friend of mine, has written an excellent article defending the pricing frenzy. More articles on Substack to come!

Sam Kriss wrote an article about the death of his best friend. Heartbreaking and worth reading.

Scott Alexander’s post on his return to substack is great. He reflects on why he closed his old blog, doxxing the NYT, etc., all combined wonderfully with the song’s still-live-on lyrics.

Lux Alptraum writes a fascinating piece about people who made real ‘me-too’ mistakes and whether we as a culture can ever forgive them.

When people talk about sexual harassment, they almost exclusively talk about men harassing women. But many women harass men. Don’t believe me, read the post. Is this justified? Scott says it isn’t.

Speaking of Scott, I had to laugh out loud when I read his series of articles about search terms that brought people to the blog. Apparently, a lot of people were searching for Indian porn and accidentally stumbled upon the anti-neo-reactionary FAQ (which I’m sure they found a welcome replacement). For similar hilarity, see Scott’s hard 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 has some serious hilarity and cuteness out of all proportion.

…more Scott links, this review of Dominion is excellent. The ending is particularly spooky:

In a recently released autobiography, Noem proudly admits that she killed her 14-month-old puppy. She said the dog wasn’t a good hunter, didn’t listen well, and had attacked some of her neighbor’s chickens. So of course she took him outside and shot him in the head. Isn’t that the tough love this country needs? Doesn’t it show good leadership instincts and the ability to make tough choices?

The public saw it differently. When the story hit the news, there was outrage from both the right and the left. Rarely does a story unite people on both sides of the political spectrum so clearly. Once a hopeless GOP vice presidential candidate, Noem’s political star has faded. Bragging about carrying out a mafia-style murder of your own puppy will do just that.

The average person saw the act as one of those unambiguous evils Scully talks about, a moment “when you don’t need doctrines, when even rights become irrelevant, when life demands a basic response of compassion, mercy, and love.” What a beautiful kumbaya moment for humanity. Look at all of us, realizing that it’s just not right to treat our fellow human beings with such contempt.

Except if you read past the headlines, you find out that she decided to kill one of her goats right after the dog. And it was the goat that 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’s name was Cricket. The goat had no name. It was just a machine on the farm.

Philosopher Daniel Rubio started a substack—here’s a recent article of his that’s particularly good. Rubio has some weird ideas about things, but he’s incredibly smart and gets the obvious things (e.g., the desirability of effective altruism) right, while many others get them wrong.

One of my favorite blogs on the internet is that of Aron Wall. Wall is a lecturer in theoretical physics at Cambridge. Wall is similar to Scott Alexander in that he is clear, smart, methodical, and excellent at writing on a wide range of subjects while at the same time exuding compassion and decency. Some of my favorite articles of his are: The Achievement Gap, God of Gapsare fundamental reality index, How Sure Can We Be? Are Bad Historians in Danger of Hellfire??, And Will the real God God, please stand up?.

Two great songs I discovered recently, both excellent: Dandelions and Forever Young. I especially like the chorus of Dandelions:

Because I’m standing in a field of dandelions
I wish for everyone that you would be mine, mine
And I see forever in your eyes
I feel good when I see you smile, smile

Richard Hanania interviewed the fascinating Dennis McCarthy, who argues that Shakespeare’s plays are largely recycled from earlier works. McCarthy has many more interesting substack articles.

Daniel Kokotajlo completely does away with compartmentalized conditionalization. CC is over!

Plasmablogging, another new (original blog 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 assumption of self-indication.

Joe Schmid is an impressively talented young philosopher who, despite only being a fresh out of college, has seventeen publications and a book to his name. He blows me away! He also has a great YouTube channel and blog. This recent post was especially devastating.

There are many interviews with Bobby Fischer online: he is a fascinating figure. Too bad he went completely mad later. The 60 minutes interview with Magnus Carlsen is just as fascinating.

Andrew Rofe’s Introduction to the Composition of the Pentateuch was particularly convincing. It argues — clearly and convincingly — for the documentary hypothesis or something like it, and argues for certain dating of the sources.

Inverse Florida has an excellent substack, which is mostly focused on complaining about left-wing people.

Alexander Pruss asks: why so few dimensions? It is an interesting question, and his answers are interesting. Another fascinating article of his is his recent paper on uncertain debt.

Connor Jennings is a friend of mine with an excellent blog. Some of his particularly good articles are: We don’t solve intolerance by insulting each other, being insensitive to animals is not manly, And Selfish reasons for wanting lab-grown meatJennings writes about important topics and does it incredibly well, making his blog a pleasure to read.

No link, but I have another article that has been accepted for publication, this time at Utilitas. It should be out soon. In this article I argue against the reproductive asymmetry. The reproductive asymmetry, according to which there is nothing good about creating a person with a good life, reminds me of a statement Rob Koons made about materialism, that it is “a view that has no convincing arguments in its favor and that is confronted with very powerful objections to which nothing even remotely approaching an adequate response has been offered.”

Mike Titelbaum has a very convincing article arguing that in the sleeping beauty problem, double halfers should consider that unflipped coins have a greater than 50% chance of coming up heads. Halfing is complete!