2025-04-17
taipei
Lorenzo Warby reviews From the Soil, on rural Chinese culture. He spends a lot of time on the favor culture, which in my impression is alive and well even in, or perhaps particularly so, in the cities as well. Interestingly, it doesn’t seem to be something which was intentionally designed or explicitly taught, which leads to some rather interesting situations. For example, let’s say someone does a small favor to someone else which requires little effort, but the impact on the grantee is very large. Generally speaking, gratitude demands that the favored will view it as a major boon, while benevolence indicates that the granter should view it as minor. Therefore, every time they see each other, the grantee has to go overboard in showing his gratitude. The end result is that both parties feel themselves somewhat in debt to the other, and the grantee starts to purposely avoid the granter to avoid further entanglement.
Konstantin Asimonov on viewing everything from the lens of politics. It seems to me that it’s the correct lens to use if you want to consider how to change the status quo. Otherwise, it’s generally inferior in terms of full understanding or enjoyment.
Jennifer Pahlka on oppositional culture in politics. More on the theme of the KPIs of large organizations, the current goal of the Democratic Party is probably something like “do no harm”, while the current Republicans aim to “own the libs”, hence the sense that “the cruelty is the point”. I wonder if there’s some way to harness oppositional culture such that you can “trick” your opposition into doing something useful, like baiting a bull, but nothing comes to mind, unfortunately.
Eneasz Brodski on the problem of how Omelas exist right now. The problem I’ve always had with the story of Omelas is why the deal is the way it is, because if anyone could do it, it seems like they could easily get enough volunteers for a continuously rotating shift system. Anyway, this essay reminds me of a question I’ve been having, as to why rationalists usually aren’t funny. My current hypothesis is that humor generally comes from amplifying or otherwise playing with discontinuities and inconsistencies in shared thinking, while the rationalist project is entirely about making your worldview more consistent and coherent. Therefore, rationalists develop the habit of crushing any inconsistencies they find as quickly as possible, eliminating all seeds of humor before they can manifest.
Ozy Brennan on ambition and how it relates to Effective Altruists. To a large extent, my lack of ambition might be why I’m reluctant to assign myself to any movement.
Ben Yeoh podcast with Samir Varna, supposedly for his book on the physics of free will, but actually just a case of where the interviewer just gets bulldozed by their subject on all manner of interesting topics.
Bryan Caplan on how standardized tests should be scored.
Sympathetic Opposition on graduating from cookbooks.
Naomi Kanakia on taste, with an interesting definition that literary taste is the development of a palate which leads you to elite consensus on the canon, as an indication of adherence to a shared set of cultural values. I actually really like this definition, as the output of a function that is therefore fully deterministic while remaining flexible. On that note, here’s an episode of DYEL on DeLilo’s White Noise (haven’t read), which talks about, among other things, social reality.
