The 7 Books I Finished in October
If you prefer to listen rather than read, this blog is available as a podcast here. Or if you want to listen to just this post:
What We Owe the Future by: William MacAskill
The Pseudoscience Wars: Immanuel Velikovsky and the Birth of the Modern Fringe by: Michael D. Gordin
Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character by: Jonathan Shay
Socrates: A Very Short Introduction by: C.C.W. Taylor
Aristotle for Everybody: Difficult Thought Made Easy by: Mortimer J. Adler
A Wizard of Earthsea (Earthsea Cycle #1) by: Ursula K. Le Guin
Freemasonry and the Origins of Latter-day Saint Temple Ordinances by: Jeffrey M. Bradshaw
A couple of months ago I decided that it was time for another survey (I last conducted a survey in 2018.) I figured that my 300th post would provide a good excuse for it, and that the newsletter would be the best place to announce it. Looking ahead I calculated that I would have to do three essays in September and October to get the timing right, which seemed only fair since my output in July and August had been so pathetic.
On top of trying to fit in additional writing, I could have picked better months to do it in. Things have been crazy with my business. I’m enrolled in a sort of a mini-MBA, my biggest client has kept me super busy, and I hired a couple of people (only one of whom is working out, the other I’m going to have to let go.) Beyond that I still haven’t completely unpacked after the move to the new house, and to complicate the chaos, we just barely moved my mother-in-law into the basement.
I bring all of this up because there was a moment in October when I realized that I had way too much on my plate, and something had to give. In that moment I suffered a mini existential crisis where for a brief period (basically the space of an afternoon) I reconsidered everything, including reading.
Among the many things I recognized in that moment of panic is that reading, which was usually relaxing and enjoyable, had become oppressive. The panic didn’t last, and it was mostly caused by all the other things I was trying to juggle, but I did make a few decisions: I started skimming a bit more. For obvious reasons this happened more with books I read than books I listen to. I also decided that each month I would make sure to have a book or two I actually enjoyed in the mix. Probably something I had already read, where enjoyment was guaranteed. (Thus the Wizard of Earthsea.) Also, I read a lot of recent non-fiction about how the world might be screwed up. Going forward I think I’m going to try to cut back on that, at least a little bit. It’s unclear how successful I’ll be there. The drive that keeps me writing (see the last post) also drives me to read books like that. But I think I should be alel to back off a little bit.
But, yeah, this all kind of started with wanting to put out a survey, so it would be great if you could spend a couple of minutes filling it out if you haven’t already. I’m giving $100 Amazon gift certificate to one random person. Though some people have told me they didn’t fill it out because they didn’t want to take $100 from me. If that describes you, you can just say don’t enter me in the drawing.
I- Eschatological Reviews
What We Owe the Future
Published: 2022
352 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
The ideology of long-termism in particular our responsibility to the potentially trillions of humans who might come after us.
What's the author's angle?
MacAskill is right at the very heart of the effective altruism movement, being not only one of the originators of the idea, but also the co-founder of many of the institutions most closely associated with the EA movement.
Who should read this book?
As someone who’s very familiar with effective altruism and long-termism, I’m not sure how much new stuff I really got out of the book. So if that describes you, or if you’ve listened to one of the thousand or so podcasts MacAskill is on you can probably skip this book. But if you’re just now hearing of long-termism/effective altruism then this is a great introduction.
General Thoughts
When one is reviewing a book that has received as much press as this one, it becomes quite the challenge to say something which hasn’t already been said—possibly dozens of times. To this I say, “Challenge accepted!” Though of course you may already see what the problem is. Unless I have watched, listened to, or read every piece of commentary on the book (which I haven’t) and remembered it all (even more unlikely) then I will never know if I was successful in this challenge. But I trust my readers to point out if I’ve failed.
With that throat clearing out of the way I’d like to expand on an analogy he briefly introduces in his chapter on stagnation.
We may be like a climber scaling a sheer cliff face with no ropes or harness, with a significant risk of falling. In such a situation, staying still is no solution; that would just wear us out, and we would fall eventually. Instead, we need to keep on climbing: only once we have reached the summit will we be safe.
There is a lot of pressure these days for making things sustainable, and the point of MacAskill’s analogy is that sustainability might not be an option. Not every point in our civilizational trajectory represents a good stopping point. As an example he points to the 1920’s:
[C]onsider what would have happened if we had plateaued at 1920s technology. We would have been stuck relying on fossil fuels. Without innovations in green technology, we would have kept emitting an enormous amount of carbon dioxide. Not only would we have been unable to stop climate change, but we would also have simply run out of coal, oil, and gas eventually. The 1920s’ level of technological advancement was unsustainable. It’s only with the technological progress of the last hundred years that we have the capability to transition away from fossil fuels.
That period’s lack of sustainability is obvious in hindsight. But is our current position similarly unsustainable? MacAskill thinks it is and he mentions that we’re at a point with “easy-to-manufacture pathogens and other potent means of destruction”. But he thinks that if we keep climbing the cliff then we will eventually get beyond these dangers and “reach a point where we have the technology to effectively defend against such catastrophic risks”
This is of course one possibility, that there is some sort of safe summit with respect to technology. That we’re currently in a position where we’ve created the harm but we need to go a little bit farther (or maybe a lot farther?) to create the defense. He mentions defending against pathogens but where does he get the faith that such a thing will ever be trivial? Everything I’ve read seems to indicate that it is and always will be a wickedly difficult problem. I suppose once we’ve spread outside of the solar system it will cease to be an existential risk. (See here for why it needs to be outside the solar system and not merely a Mars colony.) But if so we’ve still got a very long climb ahead of us, and if we’re already tired?
Another possibility is that there is no safe summit, that even if there was a reasonably effective defense against pathogens, by the time we’ve developed it we will have developed a host of other harmful technologies, which require us to develop still more complicated defenses. (Everyone’s favorite example here is AI.)
This lack of a summit is another expression of Nick Bostrom’s Vulnerable World Hypothesis, which I have talked about several times, most notably here: The idea that technology is like drawing balls of an unknown shade from an urn, and if we ever draw a pure black ball that it will mean the end of humanity. In fact, it’s interesting that MacAskill should use the analogy of climbing towards a summit, because no one climbs in order to reach safety. Summit’s aren’t safe, and in fact the highest summits in the world are in something called the Death Zone. Called this because human life is unsustainable for extended periods, and the vast majority of people need supplemental oxygen.
There’s a reading of this whole analogy where sometime around the Enlightenment we became obsessed with reaching the summit of a nearby mountain so that we could see the rest of the world, and that we’re going to succeed in reaching it, only to have no idea what to do once we get there. In fact there’s an argument to be made that our confused arrival at the summit is what’s happening at this very moment.
Beyond the two choices of continuing to climb or falling to our deaths, there are other ways we might extend the metaphor. Perhaps MacAskill is right and we do need to reach the summit, but we’ve picked an impossible route, and if we carefully retreat there’s another route we might be able to take. Or perhaps there’s a ledge where we could rest before we continue with the route we’re already on? And why do we have no “ropes or harness” in MacAskill’s analogy? What reason did we have for creating this exceptionally fragile situation? Perhaps ropes and harnesses represent traditional methods of reducing fragility? Things like religions which encourage high birth rates and prudent behavior. This all makes one wonder why MacAskill would choose for his analogy what may be the least prudent behavior humans engage in.
There’s another interesting dichotomy to consider here. People like MacAskill, Holden Karnofsky and others believe that we’re at a unique moment in the history of humanity. Karnofsky calls this the most important century. Still others, like David Deutch (who I recently reviewed here) and Steven Pinker think that we’re just walking up the mountain, not climbing, but rather than being alone we are in a group. Also, it’s possible that recently the terrain has gotten more difficult, and some members of our group are starting to complain. And the group as a whole is getting tired. But for them the key danger is that we’re going to end up camping in the least hospitable terrain, or worse start fighting, when in reality the difficult terrain is just a temporary inconvenience.
Eschatological Implications
In the last section I talked about our position on the mountain, in this section I want to talk about our condition. Are we tired as a civilization? Are we beginning to lose our grip? If so, why? Here I think that MacAskill suffers from focusing on the wrong thing. He has a whole chapter on stagnation, which is good, but all of his proposed solutions revolve around technology. He mentions our declining birthrate but mostly in the context of increasing the number of researchers. When he talks about whether biotechnology could help, his example does not involve how it might help with infertility, but that we could clone Einsteins. For MacAskill, stagnation is caused by the slowing of technological advancement and can thus be solved by figuring out how to speed it back up.
But is slowing technological advancement really the cause of stagnation? I mean sure, tautologically it’s the cause of technological stagnation, but is that really the stagnation we should be worried about?
In the chapter immediately preceding the one on stagnation MacAskill has one covering collapse. That chapter obviously discusses the potential of nuclear annihilation, and includes the example of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But those cities, rather than being examples of devastation, are actually examples of resilience, as MacAskill himself is at pains to point out:
Before learning about Hiroshima’s subsequent history, I would have thought that, even today, it would be a nuclear wasteland, consisting of little more than smoking ruins…Despite the enormous loss of life and destruction of infrastructure, power was restored to some areas within a day, to 30 percent of homes within two weeks, and to all homes not destroyed by the blast within four months. There was a limited rail service running the day after the attack, there was a streetcar service running within three days, water pumps were working again within four days, and telecommunications were restored in some areas within a month. The Bank of Japan, just 380 metres from the hypocenter of the blast, reopened within just two days. The population of Hiroshima returned to its predestruction level within a decade. Today, it is a thriving modern city of 1.2 million people.
The Japanese had every excuse to abandon Hiroshima. And even if they didn’t abandon it, it would have been perfectly understandable if it had stagnated, but neither of those things happened. Rather what MacAskill describes is an amazing vitality. This is the opposite of a civilization being tired, and yet it happened at the end of one of the most brutal defeats ever recorded. Technology wasn’t what prevented stagnation or collapse in the example of Hiroshima. It could have caused it, but it definitely didn’t prevent it. Something else was going on.
The question I have is not whether technology is stagnating, though it might be. The question I have is could we bounce back from disaster as quickly as the Japanese did in 1945? If we can’t, that’s the stagnation I worry about. That’s the weariness that is going to make us lose our grip and fall off the cliff face. You might call it willpower or cohesion, but whatever it is I don’t think modernity has served to increase it.
The Pseudoscience Wars: Immanuel Velikovsky and the Birth of the Modern Fringe
Published: 2013
291 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
The controversy over Immanuel Velikovsky’s book Worlds in Collision, and the origins and meaning of the term pseudoscience.
What's the author's angle?
Gordin is a science historian who decided to spend a few hours looking at the massive, posthumous collection of Velikovsky’s papers, which had been stored and cataloged at Princeton. He was so taken by what he found there that a few hours turned into a few years and a book.
Who should read this book?
If you’re really curious about Velikovsky then this is a great book. But I suspect that not many people fall into that category. In fact Gordin claims that if you’re younger than 50 you’ve never heard of Velikovsky. For what it’s worth I had. Carl Sagan “rips him a new one” (as we used to say) in his book Broca’s Brain. The book does have some interesting things to say about our current battles, but only in a very broad sense. There’s very little specific advice.
General Thoughts
Many years ago I was stuck at work late. We were doing some kind of server migration which involved a lot of waiting. And somehow we got on the subject of pseudointellectuals. And as we discussed the topic it gradually became apparent that people were using the term differently, to the point where we stopped the conversation and asked everyone point blank to give us their definition of that word. We discovered that out of the half dozen or so people who were there that every single person was using the word differently. I regret that at the distance of nearly two decades that I can’t recall all the definitions, though I do recall that all of them essentially boiled down to “pseudointellectuals are people I don’t like”.
I was reminded of that conversation for the first time in quite a while by this book. Because Gordin makes a similar claim. He points out that there is no universally accepted definition of pseudoscience. And that much like my coworkers all those years ago, People use it and its synonyms to refer to any intellectual effort which they find objectionable. Or as Gordin memorably says in the very first line of the book:
No one in the history of the world has ever self-identified as a pseudoscientist. There is no person who wakes up in the morning and thinks to himself, “I’ll just head into my pseudolaboratory and perform some pseudo experiments to try to confirm my pseudotheories with pseudo-facts.
In light of this Gordin decides to dig into the history of the word, and how one of the most famous accusations of pseudoscience played out by examining the case of Velikovsky and Worlds in Collision. As I already mentioned, if you're younger than 50 you probably have no idea who Immanuel Velikovsky is. But despite the fact that he’s entirely obscure now, he was so well known and so ubiquitous at one point that if you’re over 60 it’s impossible that you haven’t heard of him. For those who are unfamiliar with him or his book, I’ll going to steal Wikipedia’s description:
The book postulates that around the 15th century BC, the planet Venus was ejected from Jupiter as a comet or comet-like object and passed near Earth (an actual collision is not mentioned). The object allegedly changed Earth's orbit and axis, causing innumerable catastrophes that are mentioned in early mythologies and religions from around the world. The book has been heavily criticized as a work of pseudoscience and catastrophism, and many of its claims are completely rejected by the established scientific community as they are not supported by any available evidence.
When you hear the description it probably sounds so fantastical you wonder that anyone took it seriously, but it was amazingly popular. The book itself was a huge bestseller. There were, ostensibly, academic (pseudoacademic?) magazines. College courses were taught around this hypothesis. Carl Sagan and Velikovsky gave contending speeches at the 1974 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, where Velikovsky supporters, who had flooded the meeting, gave him a standing ovation. The thing that surprised me the most was that Velikovsky even ended up getting to be really good friends with Einstein before his death. So yeah, it was a phenomenon.
As you might imagine many of the same dynamics are playing out today in the debates over what science is. Despite this, it’s unclear what lessons to take from these past efforts. As this statement from one of the combatants illustrates:
Dennis Rawlins, a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, deftly noted the catch-22: “If one simply ignores the crank, this is ‘close-mindedness’ or ‘arrogance.’ If one then instead agrees to meet him in debate, this is billed as showing that he is a serious scholar. (For why else would the lordly establishment agree even to discuss him?) Irksome either way.” So the 1974 experiment [the AAAS meeting] was never repeated. It had been neither success nor failure. It raised the visibility of scientific opposition, but it had resolved nothing.
Currently, the more respectable scientific bodies seem to lean towards not formally engaging with ideas they consider to be pseudoscience. Deciding that it’s better to appear close-minded or arrogant, than to give it any status. I’m not entirely sure that’s the right play. But as the quote points out there is no perfect solution, it’s a catch-22. As such I don’t have many takeaways on what we should be doing. But I am very interested in how the topics we’re fighting about have changed.
Eschatological Implications
Both eras identify certain things as pseudoscience, but outside of that commonality there has ended up being a huge difference in what those things are. The fight over the veracity of Worlds in Collision had no direct impact on people’s lives. Even if it were to be established that Venus was ejected from Jupiter, for the vast majority of people that wouldn’t change anything concrete. People would still send their kids to school in the morning, go to the same job, and eat the same things for dinner. That’s not the case with the things we’re currently debating. Current battles are very different in that they have the possibility of affecting all of those things. As with so many things the big example here is the debate we had over pandemic precautions.
Does this mean that it’s more important to stop pseudoscience (whatever that is) cold? Because while believing that Venus dispensed manna thousands of years ago is ultimately harmless, believing that vaccines don’t work gets people killed? Or does it mean the exact opposite, that we should give these ideas as much attention as we can spare? Because lives really are at stake, and locking in the wrong consensus could have massive negative consequences?
I would personally lean towards the latter. At some point you either believe in the scientific process or you don’t. The people who decided to invite Velikovsky to speak to the AAAS, obviously really did believe in that process. They believed that if they honestly grappled with the facts that the truth would emerge, and while it appears that they didn’t consider that invitation to be successful at the time. The influence of Velikovsky arguably started to decline at around the same time and, a few decades on, no one has heard of him.
I will say that times are very different. And also that there was a localism to solving problems back then which has largely dissipated. (Which, I would argue, is another step in the wrong direction.) But I think if scientists back then were willing to take Velikovsky seriously, that we need to do a much better job of taking current concerns seriously, and not just dismiss anything we don’t like as pseudoscience.
II- Capsule Reviews
Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character
by: Jonathan Shay
Published: 2013
291 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
How the experience of combat, and the subsequent PTSD experienced by soldiers in Vietnam, parallels the experience of the Greeks and Trojans, and particularly Achilles, in the Iliad.
What's the author's angle?
Shay thinks we’re treating PTSD all wrong. In support of this hypothesis he turns to the Iliad as an example of how soldiers used to be treated, and contrasts it with the failed methods we used both during and after Vietnam.
Who should read this book?
I suspect this book might be a little bit out of date, but I’m definitely no expert on current best practices for PTSD. Also I’m curious about data on soldiers who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sebastian Junger’s Tribe (which I talked about here) seemed to indicate that PTSD has gotten even more prevalent.
General Thoughts
I read this book because it featured so prominently in The Ethics of Beauty, by Timothy Patitsas, which I reviewed for the magazine American Hombre. I was particularly curious about whether Shay claimed that studying the Iliad was more effective than traditional therapy at healing PTSD. He sort of does, at the end, but I think Patitsas may have overstated the case.
Also as I was reading the book I was reminded of a post by Bret Devereaux, ancient historian, and author of the very popular blog A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, where he claimed that
[T]here is vanishingly little evidence that people in the ancient Mediterranean or medieval Europe experienced PTSD from combat experience in the way that modern soldiers do.
I’m inclined to believe this, nevertheless Shay does draw some remarkable parallels between the experiences of Achilles and the experiences of the hundreds of Vietnam veterans he’s worked with. They really do seem to be describing much the same thing as Homer, and having read the book it’s hard to believe that Shay’s not on to something. But exactly what continues to be elusive.
I already mentioned Tribe by Junger, which covers similar ground. And actually claims that PTSD has gotten even worse since Vietnam. He does speculate that PTSD provides an easy path to getting declared 100% disabled and thereby being eligible to receive around $3300 a month, inflation adjusted, for the rest of your life. This is a non-trivial incentive for veterans to lie about such things. Junger also points out the very counterintuitive fact that Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who experienced combat are less likely to be diagnosed with PTSD. So there’s a lot about this subject that needs unraveling.
Another thing that makes me doubt that PTSD is getting more prevalent, is just how bad Vietnam was. Shay includes story after story of truly awful events, and I know such events also took place in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it’s hard to imagine that either conflict was as bad as what the veterans in the book say about Vietnam. Still, if you just look at reported rates they’ve gone up.
In the end I’m just some guy who’s read a few books. I have no direct experience of combat and very little experience even of trauma. But I still can’t shake the feeling—a feeling this book only reinforces—that we’ve gotten a lot worse at dealing with such trauma.
Socrates: A Very Short Introduction
by: C.C.W. Taylor
Published: 2019
160 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
Socrates, the historical man, the character in Plato’s dialogues, and a few other things besides.
Who should read this book?
As an audiobook this was just four hours, and in that time it distilled out a lot of information. I read it to broaden my understanding of classical philosophy, which I’m still trying to work my way through.
General Thoughts
As I’ve mentioned before in this space I’m trying to work my way through the great books of the western world. I kind of fell off the wagon this year, and I’m hoping to get back on, and I figured reminding myself of what I had already read was a good way to do that. Also this was a test of the Very Short Introduction series, a collection of books put out by Oxford on, as of this writing, 754 different topics. If they're good they would be an excellent resource to be able to draw on.
I found the book to be very informative, but kind of dry, though I kind of expected that. I’m going to try out the VSI for Plato as well, and we’ll see how it goes.
Aristotle for Everybody: Difficult Thought Made Easy
Published: 1997
206 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
The philosophy of Aristotle summarized for a modern audience.
Who should read this book?
I read this in preparation for reading actual Aristotle (which is the next author on my great books list). It’s another short one, only five and a half hours on audio. I thought it was pretty good, but I’ll know more once I read some actual Aristotle.
General Thoughts
I thought the book was structured well. And flowed pretty easily. Also it was somewhat less dry than the Socrates book. As I alluded to, I mostly read it to lay a foundation before actually reading Aristotle, so that I don’t get too lost. Whether it fulfills that purpose is yet to be seen.
A Wizard of Earthsea (Earthsea Cycle #1)
Published: 1968
205 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
Ged, a talented wizard who is consumed by pride until that pride leads to a horrible mistake which he spends the majority of the book trying to rectify.
Who should read this book?
Everyone. It’s a fantasy classic that’s the whole package: great plot, characters, writing, worldbuilding, everything. Plus it’s short.
General Thoughts
I suspect most of my readers have heard of A Wizard of Earthsea, so I don’t intend to spend much time discussing the actual book, rather I want to talk about why I decided to read it. I believe Tim Ferris mentioned that the audio version was fantastic, but more than that I realized recently that rather than reading 3-4 non-fiction “This is why the world sucks” books every month (which don’t get me wrong I enjoy, they’re my jam.) I could read 2-3 such books and have time to re-read a couple of books I really love, like A Wizard of Earthsea. So going forward I intend to do that. I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to read next, but I’m excited to figure that out.
I will include one quote from the book that struck me on this read through:
[T]he truth is that as a man’s real power grows and his knowledge widens, ever the way he can follow grows narrower: until at last he chooses nothing, but does only and wholly what he must do.
III- Religious Reviews
Freemasonry and the Origins of Latter-day Saint Temple Ordinances
Published: 2012
556 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
An apologetic work which examines the temple ordinances of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). In particular the similarities between these ordinances, the Masonic Ordinances, and what we know about ancient temple ordinances.
What’s the author’s angle?
Over the years the Church has frequently been attacked for copying its temple rituals from the Masons. As an LDS apologist, Bradshaw sets out to show that the rituals have many elements which existed as part of ancient temple rituals, but which were not part of masonic rites. Given that these elements were not known at the time of Joseph Smith, this would imply that they came by way of revelation.
Who should read this book?
Anyone who is interested in the connection between LDS temple rites, Masonic rites, and Ancient rites. (Which I assume will mostly be members of the Church, but doesn’t have to be.)
General Thoughts
Surprisingly, I don’t read as many LDS books as you might expect, so I’m not an expert on what sort of books have already been published on this subject, but this one seems pretty authoritative. It’s one of those massive books where it’s only about half primary text, and the other half is bibliography and endnotes.
As you might expect there’s no ironclad proof that the LDS Temple Ceremony was practiced anciently in its current form, but there are a whole host of elements whose existence is confirmed by ancient texts which only appear in the LDS ceremony and not the Masonic rites, and furthermore this ancient evidence was not something that Joseph Smith would have had access to. I assume as per usual, some people will find this very compelling and other people, less favorably disposed to the Church, will think that Bradshaw goes too far in the connection he draws.
But for anyone genuinely looking for answers to this question of the connection between the Masonic Rites and the LDS Temple Ceremony, there is no better or more fascinating book on the subject.
If you’ve been paying attention you’ll know that this is my 301st post. It’s possible I only had 300 of these clever(?) end of post donation requests in me, and that going forward I’m going to just have some boilerplate outro. You know one of those ones where I thank my patreons by name? If you want to see your name on a low-traffic, niche blog, with severe brevity issues, there’s an easy way to make that happen.