Ben > Recent Status Updates

He moves across the country on a whim and is immediately headhunted by multiple recruiting agencies for a bunch of delivery jobs. The size of the economy in China is so enormous that he never worries about finding work even for jobs with the lowest barriers to entry, which for that reason are flooded with applicants. He has his life beaten out of him by overwork--but not his humanity. The writer is gentle and kind.

On page 65 he talks about a workers village filled with farming folk forcibly resettled by the government as part of its urbanisation push. He talks repeatedly about 'parks', which refers to large areas of land zoned for single uses, such as logistics parks, science parks, etc. He writes of being overawed by the immense size of the delivery warehouses he works in. China's scale overwhelms even the Chinese.

Similar to Bukowski's 'Post Office'. Simple descriptions of low-wage working life in the gig economy of mainland China. It sounds abysmal. Work-life balance is nonexistent: the author often worked 6 days per week, 12 hours per day, with lots of unpaid overtime. He made a measly wage and even making that required him to deliver 1 package every 4 minutes for his whole shift. Its plain language is quietly literary.

One of the best things about being alive is having the opportunity to participate in the story of civilisation. It's one reason why I'm so insatiably curious: there's just so much to learn about what it means for me to be alive, in general as well as in my unique historical moment. Urban planning is part of that story, and it's evolving at unprecedented speed. Its scale in China is mindboggling, its ethics obscene!

Written in a stream of consciousness style, this has made me think differently about a wide range of OCD-like disorders, that is, everything from eating disorders to body dysmorphia to pathological & violent jealousy. OCD-like tendencies are everywhere. It's made me more bullish on meditation and the plasticity-enhancing nature of psychedelics as must-haves for the treatment of mental health generally.

Wilson says that Darwinism lead inevitably to the Jewish holocaust in WWII. He cites one book that argues that the holocaust wouldn't have happened, or wouldn't have been as bad, if Darwinism were not ascendent. But I'm unsure what the point of this argument is. Was the holocaust not received with horror of historical proportions? Is it not regarded, even by secularists, as one of humankind's worst crimes?

After railing against Harris for asserting that some ideas are beyond question, Wilson then says that 'arguments with gravity are difficult to maintain'. Surely, Harris meant by his 'no question' refrain what Wilson means about gravity: not that some scientific dogmas are literally unquestionable (although Harris should be far more careful with his words), but that arguments against them are 'difficult to maintain'.

As Wilson points out, Sam keeps repeating the phrase, 'No question. No question. No question'. That's not a sceptical attitude, nor a scientific one. Kuhn recognises two types of scientist, the revolutionary & the normal. The revolutionary scientists, the ones responsible for its greatest advances, ask questions. The normals don't; they accept dogma & do (valuable) piecemeal work. Sam thinks all science is "normal".

Harris commits the No True Scotsman fallacy by saying that Christians with hard-science degrees, working on hard-science problems, aren't behaving like scientists. He also says that the theory of evolution 'no longer admits of intelligent dispute'. Disappointing: every theory can be intelligently questioned (see Einstein on quantum theory). It is the essence of science to try to undermine itself (falsification).

Apparently Harris claims that the core of science is intellectual honesty. This is stupid. Einstein himself destroyed his reputation in the latter part of his life by insisting against all evidence to the contrary that quantum mechanics was untrue and incorrect. What's true of Einstein is true of lesser scientists: science advances in spite of, often because of, our all-too-human failings, our pride, our spite, etc.

Chapter 8 has some good clapbacks from Wilson. It seems Harris has an incomplete understanding of some of the sociological milieu of the Jews who wrote the Old Testament. Harris asks why God didn't put a treatise on maths in the Bible; Wilson says the Hebrews didn't think it pertinent or more respectable a field of study than poetry. Harris also misunderstands ancient Hebrew norms of scholarly attribution.

Wilson's a Calvinist: 'during [hurricane] Katrina, God was laying waste to the city. Scriptural Christians do not feel in the least bit apologetic about how God governs the world. What He did to New Orleans was holy, righteous, just, good. Some of it may have been an obvious chastisement for those who would build a major city below sea level in hurricane country & then attempt to govern it through corruption & vice.'

In chapter 7, Wilson repeats for the umpteenth time the oversight which is his biggest failing. He asserts as though it were fact the idea that atheism implies, even necessitates, atheism and amorality. In this he reveals himself as ignorant (and I can only assume he is wilfully ignorant, because it's impossible not to know about it) of the thousands of years of discussions of secular ethics and the nature of value.

Chapter 6 discusses the problem of evil. Douglas resolves it by "embracing" the wrath of God, by seeing it as meaningful. This doesn't solve the problem of evil; it merely gives evil a purpose. By analogy, the suffering inherent in nature is good rather than malignantly useless because without it we would not be the creatures we are. But without it, we'd be different creatures. A reason isn't a justification.

Douglas closes by chapter 5 by responding to Sam Harris, who said that God is the most prolific abortionist of all. Douglas's response is, basically, that, yes, He is, but He's allowed to be, because He's God. To quote: "You do not appear to understand that if God is the giver of life (and He is), He may also take that life away." Is abortion bad? Yes. Is it bad when God does it? Apparently not!

Chapter 5 makes it clear that Mr Wilson has no understanding of the concept of empathy. He keeps referring to "nervous systems" as though they can only register orgasms and stab wounds and not vicarious joy, second-hand embarrassment, empathetic anger, and literally every other variation of emotional experience that our mirror neurons, among other things, permit us to experience. He is, simply, monstrously ignorant.

Douglas then compares the suffering of a bug to that of a late-term abortion. This is meant to make the reader believe that Sam Harris's position is that aborting a blastocyst is morally equivalent to aborting a late-state fetus. He does not believe this. It is also, again, unfair to the Jains, whose opposition to abortion is based on the belief that humans have souls. It has nothing to do with pain. More deceptions!

Chapter 4 opens with a discussion of abortion. Harris is quoted as discussing the abortion of 3-day-old, 150-cell blastocysts, which don't feel pain. Douglas then mentions the Jain ethic of nonviolence. But you cannot be violent towards something that does not feel pain. He then grossly misrepresents Jainism by saying Jains can't kill malarial mosquitos.

Douglas ends chapter three with a discussion of Jainism. Harris praises Jainism. Douglas gives examples of Jain practices, such as sweeping the path before them so that they don't step on bugs. Douglas then asks if Harris would also approve of people not taking antibiotics so as not to harm microorganisms. But most Jain teachings don't recommend this. It's a straight-up strawman. Such deception from Doug is common.

Douglas then says that incarcerated criminals are slaves in the same way that innocent people kidnapped by raiders and conquerors were in the pre-modern world. He responds to the obvious rebuttal, "but modern slaves are criminals", by drawing yet another false equivalence and saying that both slave-owning societies were merely protecting themselves from aggressors. Aggressors like the innocent and the kidnapped?

Chapter 3: Sam cites a Biblical atrocity. Douglas says it's not atrocious, actually, because it's better than what preceded it. By analogy, assaulting your wife is better than raping her, so laws that ban rape but permit assault ought to be welcomed. Better would be to outlaw both. Douglas then says that Old Testament atrocities are preferable to atheism because some atheists rape kids in Thailand. Holy strawman.

The first chapter was trash: "if it's not grounded in God, how can morality be objective? Checkmate, atheists!" is the juvenile tone of that chapter. Chapter two says something important: the common atheist retort, that they're atheist about one more god than the monotheists, is ridiculous. Theism is not atheism pus one god any more than atheism is just theism minus the last god standing & Harris is wrong to say so.

Charlie's a giant whose philosophy has deeply influenced my own. But his intellect & temperament make him underemphasise the importance for the ordinary person of above all avoiding ruin. E.g., he counsels patience & betting heavily & with conviction only when that very rare sure bet arrives. But the average person would do well to heed Taleb, to doubt our convictions, & to cap the downside even of these rare bets.

As other readers have noted, the advice here is stock-standard, but the conversion of the money saved from actioning this advice into years saved paying off the mortgage is enlightening. This conversion is the sole selling point of the book so far, but it's a good one. It makes the true cost of our trade-offs about simple things, such as reducing out grocery bill, explicit and emotionally impactful .

So far, absolutely fantastic. It speaks to me as though I was born to hear it. Specialise late. As per the idea of memory dividends from 'Die with Zero', go out of your way to memorialise your experiences (including aesthetic ones, such as reading books and watching movies) so that they're remembered. DIY: it can be unpleasant but is deeply meaningful. Keep exploring in ways both big and small. Be open, extraverted.

'Willing to take risks for the price of self-knowledge'. For many years, I considered myself risk-averse, prudent, conservative, calculating. I understood these adjectives in a way that's made me feel pathetic, small. But my teens & 20s were filled with intense, sometimes unbelievable in retrospect, risk-taking *in the pursuit of self-knowledge*. Taking risks *for this purpose* is admirable. I like that about myself.

Author says she read 32 books in anticipation of her 1-month experiment with microdosing. And people call *me* prudent!

The second chapter is worse than the first. The author starts making large & unfounded claims about the state of the nation & its history, e.g., his criticism of neoliberalism was opinionated & lacked a single reference to source material of any kind or quality. He claims that Australia isn't egalitarian but literally one sentence later says that it is, relative to England. It lacks the focus of the first chapter.

The first chapter deals with the story of how decades of Liberal Party failure led to the emergence of the Teal movement in the mid-late-2010s and through them to the permanent reshaping of Australian politics, as trends show that the dominance of the Liberal-Labor two party system is on an inexorable decline and that independents, the Teals most conspicuous among them, will figure ever more largely in political life

He redefines democracy to mean only direct democracy, for example as the kind sometimes practiced (to tyrannical effect) in ancient Greece. This is a clear example of the No True Scotsman fallacy and it denies or rejects the widespread contemporary understanding of the term that incorporates the liberal traditions and which presupposes as normal limits on democracy so as to prevent the tyranny of the majority.