2025-05-13
swimming
Ross Barkan on choosing to write fiction rather than non-fiction. There’s an idea that the purpose of fiction is to incept ideas directly into the mind of your readers, and he has two interesting points: firstly, that this is useless if writers of fiction all have the same worldview and therefore have no ideas worth sending; and secondly that this is wasted if no one is reading fiction anymore, if even those who want to be convinced of things just head directly to non-fiction. This probably explains a lot about why literary fiction has lost so much status, because if the only reason left to read is for pleasure, how are you different from the genre writers you look down upon? Some similar points by Caleb Caudell in the Metropolitan Review, on Substack versus literary publications.
J.P. Andrew argues against nihilism using a variant of Pascal’s Wager (phrased much better than my formulation). Notably, this is also an argument for other useful stances, like that your senses correspond to reality, or that time and causality are not illusions.
Henrik Karlsson on being intentional about where to put your attention. I’m sympathetic to this, but for me one of the most enjoyable aspects of our current age that being distractible is rewarded. Indeed, the upgrade from having to google things to just directly being able to dive into topics using LLMs is pleasurable in and of itself, even ignoring how it can lead to serendipitous inspiration. Chris Arnade defends the Europoor mindset of enjoying life, and in my revealed preference in how I am living my life, I agree with him (maybe I’ll regret it later, who knows). But in doing so, I know that I’m piggybacking off the technologists working on things like clean energy, AI research, and public infrastructure, and so I don’t forget my gratitude to them.
Moment of Zen has an interview with Shyam Sankar and Mike Lee at the Hill and Valley Forum, a justification for the REINS Act, which would essentially destroy the last vestiges of Chevron deference. Related, Lenny Rachitsky interviews Nabeel Qureshi on working at Palantir, which tries to explain the origins of the Palantir Mafia. Nabeel describes a customer focus, and product is more of a natural result from the feedback loop automatically created by dogfooding your tools. The funny thing is that this is clearly the playbook they are running right now with the US government: product-focused companies wouldn’t be able to pull it off, but embedding people who know how to get things done into dysfunctional bureaucracies is really just another day in the office for Palantir.
Theo Jaffee interviews Luke Drago on the intelligence curse thesis. The points about marginalization of the commons seem off to me, because assuming that AI remains accessible, increased capabilities should actually increase the amount of power available to the average person. Notably, the arguments Luke makes about why the average person has nonnegligible power today, like their ability to affect the culture by writing a blog or starting a youtube channel, may actually become more relevant if AI takes over. It’s actually the current power “middle class” which has the most to lose in relative terms, as they lose the exclusivity of their own professional abilities. But it’s fine, because he gets the most important thing right, which is the need to preserve the ability to exit. The ability to go off and create a viable alternative system is the ultimate protection to the current system going bad.
Ozy Brennan on a sex-realist (non-transgender-exclusionary) feminism. Very relevant, there was a Twitter poll I saw recently, asking people to choose two out of three: the true, the beautiful, the good.
Matt Yglesias on India and Pakistan.
Lane Rettig reviews living in Dubai. I haven’t visited yet, but I plan to sometime this year.
Peter Wildeford linkthread, mostly on AI.
David Deek argues for the efficacy of cash incentives for childbirth.
Dynomight on choosing the title for your blogposts.
Eshan Samaranayake biotech linkthread.
