Category Archives: Links

Assorted links

  1. By raw coincidence from – here is this line from McSweeney’s – specifically regarding prayers to end war and murder

    Mudslides, freak lightning storms, untreatable illnesses–those are God problems. But YOU killing each other with killing machines YOU created to kill each other seems like a YOU problem. Go do something about it! But, hey, that’s just this God’s opinion.

    As Hoffer put it – we walk between the devil and the dragon.

  2. My favorite SMBC so far – sort of related to my “Let’s Kill Hitler” book idea.
  3. One of Tyler Cowen’s better posts – regarding Moore’s Law and Social Media – some nuggets

    Manipulable people can be reached with a greater flood of information, so over time as data on them accumulate, they become more manipulable.

    It is often easier to manipulate smart people than stupid people, because the latter may be oblivious to a greater set of cues and clues.

    There is a performative dimension that renders both sides more rigid and dishonest.

    The socially sensitive, very smart people will become the most despairing, the most manipulated, and the most angry. The socially insensitive will either jump ship into the camp of the socially sensitive, or they will cultivate new methods of detachment, with or without Stoicism. Straussianism will compete with Stoicism.

Social sensitivity is the nugget of wisdom – that seems like more of a spectrum disorder (to use the parlance of our time)

Quote of the day

From Slate Star

Having only things you don’t like repressed looks from the inside a lot like there being no repression at all.

and

There are taboos in history, too, and in economics, and in political science, and although they’re less obvious and interesting they still mean you need this same skepticism when parsing results from these fields. “But every legitimate scientist disagrees with this particular Reactionary belief!” should be said with the same intonation as “But every legitimate archbishop disagrees with this particular heresy.”

Links of Interest

  • An awesome visualization of Migration Flows
  • Random thought – I came across a blog comment (a random walk from TDAXP) a while ago (something about social class) who suggested that the whole reason that libertarians don’t care about social class (i.e. the 1%, underclass, etc) is that libertarianism consists largely of the high side of the autistic spectrum and libertarians are incapable of seeing social class.  The implied assumption is that listening to libertarians talk about social class stuff is like listening to blind people talk about paintings.  IMHO that is a feature, not a bug but opinions will vary.  An interesting thought.