January Update
Running, reading, and movies
This is my January update – a brief salvo on what I did, read, and watched.
Note: there are spoilers for the movies Windfall and Sea Beast.
Running: I ran 26 miles in 26 hours with a great group of people. The running was easy, but disrupting sleep to run 1 mile every hour for 26 hours was not. It took me me a few days to fully recover.
Twitter:
Food: I discovered Brian Johnson from the My First Million podcast. He has recently received a lot of publicity for his project to extend his own life. I can’t say that I’ve fully evaluated it, but I can say that he has good recipes for minimalist, healthy meals. I’m a fan of regularly eating the same thing and especially enjoy his sweet potato dish.
Fake News: I enjoyed chatting about Fake News and Stoicism with my former professor, Justin McBrayer. That discussion prompted this post:
Sea Beast: Enjoyable Girardian children’s movie. The sea beasts and humans have been at war for hundreds of years. The protagonist discovers, of course, that the sea beasts aren’t evil and that the hundred-year war between humans and dragons is pointless. However, there must be a scapegoat and in this movie, that’s the king and queen who “promoted” the story the justified the war. The movie could have promoted the message that tragedy is unavoidable and that it doesn’t matter who started the war, but it reverts to common moral tropes despite its progressive skin.
Moral Progress: I’ve been thinking about moral progress and decline – both visible in San Francisco. This piece is one outcome of that work:
Princess Bride: watched this classic for what must be around the 10th time.
Effective altruism: Tyler Cowen gave an insightful lecture about philosophy:
In his talk, Tyler notes that effective altruism is at risk of essentially turning into a wing of the Democratic party – this isn’t entirely bad, but it’s not ideal. On a related note, some have asked me about an email a philosopher affiliated with the movement, Nick Bostrom, sent out in the 90s. My general impression of the affair is best captured here, here, and here. I think the apology was fine and Bostrom is correct when he wrote “the world is a conspiracy to distract us from what's important.”
The Inevitability of Tragedy: The world gets murkier as you zoom in. Nonetheless, in my view, this book is not hard enough on Kissinger. I was convinced that Kissinger was a war criminal and empty suit from reading Chomsky and Hitchens early in life. The latter idea is incorrect. The worldview, that tragedy is inevitable, is correct. There are no Manichean battles to be won. Pacifism does not result in peace. Yes, much of what America did in the name during the time of Kissing was terrible, but one should always ask “compared to what?”
Alice Evans: is my model of a good intellectual. Opinionated, energetic, honest, and clearly loves thinking. Her podcast ROCKING OUR PRIORS is awesome – who else has an excellent interview with Robin Dunbar and then randomly drops a five-minute episode on a new account of the evolutionary origins of homophobia?
The Dreamhoarders: The key idea here is that the true elite is the top 20% of society – not the top 1% or 0.1%. This frame of the world is underrated. Richard Reeves defends it well and offers good suggestions on how to combat how the top 20% hoard the goods of education and housing. However, he did not, to my mind, adequately address questions of nature vs nurture, the argument that the upper middle class deserves what it has earned, or the idea that it’s more important to raise the ceiling of society than its floor.
Richard Hanania: is a “right-wing gadfly.” A number of his right-wing pieces are provoking and well argued – but lately, he’s aimed at some of the worst tendencies on the American right. I respect people who hold their “allies” to reasonable standards and for that reason, Hanania recent turn is admirable:
Windfall: A rude, manipulative, and elitist tech billionaire husband and his intelligent and exploiter wife are robbed by an incompetent. The wife traded autonomy for power and as the pressure to have a child increases is regretful of her life path. The husband is largely oblivious to the needs of others. On some level, he knows he isn't loved and she doesn't want a child, but that doesn't appear to move him much. The creative and industrious Latino gardener gets involved. Eventually, the wife kills the thief and, instead of freeing her husband, shoots him point-blank. There's a feminist reading for this film. The wife viciously frees herself from dependents who are, in their own way, leeches on society. The thief steals from other people and the tech billionaire provides a service to thousands of companies allowing them to run more efficiently – wait one of them doesn't sound like a leech. Perhaps the best reading is a conservative one. The tech billionaire is the only person who doesn't kill anyone. He's rude, manipulative, and a liar – but he neither robbed people or shot anyone. So, he comes out ahead. Not recommended.
Decision to Leave: Beautiful film. Park Chan Wook’s films are violent and erotic. This film manages to be the most erotic and violent even as it is the most subtle. Recommended, I saw it twice.
This is an experiment – I may share these less frequently in the future. I enjoy reading others’ updates, so if you’re on the fence, go for it.