Psientist > Recent Status Updates

We've got through the salacious white-slavery bits and are back to Baltimore and the aftermath as seen through the official response.

These sections raised all sorts of questions about who had reported them, how reliable they were, and interestingly how many of them seem to have been involved with the USA in some manner. Trying to quickly answer these questions is thwarted by the irritating chapter endnotes.

Forced myself to finish it up. Just had the homily about the Singularity. Nothing unpredictable.

Just finished the section where he ties technological progress to colonial expansion. There is a good deal of blurring the difference between capitalism and imperialism here. Seems to be working himself up to calling for some sort of limits on capitalism due to climate catastrophe, but he is going very carefully

Ridiculously brief aside on Game Theory. It would have been better not to mention it. In an attempt to bolster the anodyne idea that cultures/beliefs/ideologies can serve themselves using humans as a petri dish he has ignored all the work done by e.g. Sober on showing that arms races are just one corner case that leads to mutual destruction. Mutual aid is far more common. Pre-figuration for neo-lib conclusion?

YNH is confused about the Marxist assertion culture functions to control people against their own interests. Many Marxist scholars argue explicitly that such ideas arise explicitly from the material conditions of production. Again YNH is slipshod and free in his wide-ranging assertions. Also posits chaos and determinism as opposites: Chaos Theory actually argues that chaos arises in deterministic systems.

Although agreeing with the problems of Just-So stories in human history (for which idea he should acknowlege Stephen Jay Gould) it is an Iron Law of Bullshit that someone asserting a debatable hypothesis will refer to said hypothesis as an iron law.

I like the idea of Nazis as "evolutionary humanists". Had not heard that definition before. Not sure about his definition of humanism or the partition of humanism into 3 branches: liberal, socialist or evolutionary. Seems like he has introduced the idea of syncretism in the earlier discussion of religion in order to give himself some room for fudging and wriggling here.

The attempt to paint ideologies as being the same as religions is not useful. In answer to his suggestion: yes, some Buddhist sects and stoics are examples of ideologies, but not religions. Some people _do_ justify their view of the world with (inaccurate) references to relativistic physics (New Age religions). Communism and neo-liberalism are different because they make concrete testable assertions. Weak sauce.

The attempt to paint ideologies as being the same as religions is not useful. In answer to his suggestion: yes, some Buddhist sects and stoics are examples of ideologies, but not religions. Some people _do_ justify their view of the world with (inaccurate) references to relativistic physics (New Age religions). Communism and neo-liberalism are different because they make concrete testable assertions. Weak sauce.

p.228 on religion is very vague. I wonder what scholars of religion make of his definition of religion, especially the idea that what he terms "natural-law religions" include liberalism,nazism and communism because they all believe in a "superhuman order". Does that make physics and chemistry religions too?

The same slow pace, moving onto religion as the other unifying myth. Will finish, but it is not scintillating.

He is trying to paint money as one of the essential abstractions that allow human co-operation and is about to launch into a description of the positive effects of large empires ( a sort of humorless What the Romans Did For Us reprise).
He appears to quote David Graeber as support for the origin-of-money/coincidence-of-wants myth that is exactly what Graeber attacks (if I understand them both correctly). Hmmm!

The style is a bit simplistic. Overly repetitive and explanatory, really hammering the points home. Like a very introductory freshman course. On the positive side it was interesting to see how strongly Harari comes out on the side of judging agricultural civilization as being a step backwards. That used to be the territory of anarcho-primitivists like John Zerzan and was more recently developed by James C. Scott.

The style is a bit simplistic. Overly repetitive and explanatory, really hammering the points home. Like a very introductory freshman course. On the positive side it was interesting to see how strongly Harari comes out on the side of judging agricultural civilization as being a step backwards. That used to be the territory of anarcho-primitivists like John Zerzan and was more recently developed by James C. Scott.

Am now deep into the second part of this, namely the play. I do not like it. The speech patterns seem weirdly American for C16th Pomeranians. The imagined character expositions seem thin, especially the ailing, irrational bishop.

The first part was interesting. This is work.

The play is over (p.159). Definitely tedious and unconvincing.

Am now deep into the second part of this, namely the play. I do not like it. The speech patterns seem weirdly American for C16th Pomeranians. The imagined character expositions seem thin, especially the ailing, irrational bishop.

The first part was interesting. This is work.

Am now deep into the second part of this, namely the play. I do not like it. The speech patterns seem weirdly American for C16th Pomeranians. The imagined character expositions seem thin, especially the ailing, irrational bishop.

The first part was interesting. This is work.

Not sure yet. There is much that I like, but there is a tendency to be too perfectly cute and a bit predictable. This could go either way.

Great premise a flu-like outbreak is rapidly overwhelming the city of Toronto. Will be interesting to see how this story published in 2014 coheres with reality.
I am afraid that I do not like the prose-style. There is something Dan Brownish about the style of the opening sentences "This was Act 4 of King Lear". I don't know how to analyze it gramatically, but it irritates me.

Problem with this is the amount of referenced media I have to go back and re-experience to see if I agree.

Fascinating and disturbing. Have gone back to the printed version after my ebook lost its notes and bookmarks.

Four recipes in and it's a mixed bag, but mostly positive. The chocolate-date-millionaires shortbread was okay, but would have been improved by toasting the oats and adding salt somewhere. The date `caramel` was impressive though. The butterbean veggie burgers were mediocre but the roasted beet and apple salad and the lemony lasagna were delicious.

I am not overwhelmed with admiration. I do not understand the critical reception this received.

So far I do not understand the fame of this book. It smells like Downton Abbey and related class grovelling. Perhaps that is unfair as it came before them. But I find the butler's speech patterns unconvincing also -- not enough stuffy avoidance of sentences ending with prepositions.

Well.... that wasn't worth it.

I wonder why this feels less tedious? Shorter sections with each character? Or perhaps I am just used to them now.