An excellent blog post that is not a rant: Single-function devices in the world of the everything machine, by Christopher Butler.
Limitations expand our experience by engaging our imagination. Unlimited options arrest our imagination by capturing us in the experience of choice. One, I firmly believe, is necessary for creativity, while the other is its opiate. Generally speaking, we don’t need more features. We need more focus.
Indeed.
Some of the best blog posts are rants, and Andrew Gelman just published one, about reckless disregard for the truth. Here is why he thinks the term “bullshit” does not apply:
In my post, I asked what do you call it when someone is lying but they’re doing it in such a socially-acceptable way that nobody ever calls them on it? Some commenters suggested the term “bullshit,” but that didn’t quite seem right to me, because these people seemed pretty deliberate in their factual misstatements.
I disagree. Whether the bullshitter is deliberate should not matter, and many do indeed BS with a specific goal in mind. In the examples he lists those are inflating the impact of a paper and getting paid for expert testimony in favor of big tobacco. Indeed, dig deep enough and you will find hunger for money and prestige to be at the root of much bullshit.
A few good links to start the week:
- Innovation and Repetition by René Girard
- Face it: you’re a crazy person by Adam Mastroianni
- How to build the perfect city by Chris Arnade (also in conversation with Tyler)
- Does the Pulitzer Prize Hate Substack? by Ted Gioia (note where or these articles live!)
Thomas Basbøll is back writing, with a wonderfully meta-post about why one would want to write at all:
The obvious alternative that I’m heading towards is to seek reasons to write within yourself, rather than in your environment. Write for the clarity it brings or the pleasure it affords. Write because it improves your mind, not the minds of your readers. In the future, as most of the prose we need to get by (the prose that stores and transmits useful information) is produced by machines, we will write for the same reason that we swim, rides bikes, jog, go to the gym.
That is the dream.
Some good links from the past week:
Yes, investigator-initiated clinical trials take time. But rather than back-patting and boasting about how it can still be done despite the setbacks, why not propose solutions for how to speed them up? I made a few off-the-cuff suggestions but you can also find serious efforts on that front.
If you say that “$1 of research investment yields $5 in returns to the economy” — as some do — but then clarify that under those $5 you have a lot of laboratory-building and infrastructure-supporting — as some did — what point exactly are you trying to make? As ever, there is much wisdom in r/Jokes.
A major entry in the Annals of Zombie Medicine must be screening for prostate cancer in men age 70 and above. Recent events had Nassim Taleb asking whether one could detect aggressive prostate cancer early, and one could, but… Indeed, this kind of screening has been singled out as something not to do for more than a decade, and yet:
Prostate screening in men ≥70 has not reached a 50% reduction in use since the 2012 guideline release.
Meanwhile, a full one-third of adult Americans is not doing the kinds of screening that are recommended, probably because they involve poop.
After finishing The Space Trilogy I was wondering which of C.S. Lewis’s many books I should read next. Well, Kyla Scanlon has just nudged me in the right direction with her Economic Lessons from the Screwtape Letters:
In Screwtape, evil doesn’t arrive through fire and fury. It creeps in through ease, comfort, and optimization. Screwtape wants to nudge people into passivity as a way of capturing their souls. Let them scroll. Let them spend. Let them smooth away all friction until they wake up hollow and can’t remember why.
Sounds about right.
Speaking of Gioia, I love his work, his most recent article is just wonderful, and I absolutely share his view on techno optimism… but blogging from Substack makes things a bit awkward.
