Astral Codex Ten Podcast

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In Defense Of "I'm Sorry You Feel That Way" Sep 20, 2024

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And its cousin, "I'm sorry if you're offended"

People hate this phrase. They say it's a fake apology that only gets used to dismiss others' concerns. Well, I'm sorry they feel that way.

People sometimes get sad or offended by appropriate/correct/reasonable actions:

Maybe one of your family members makes an unreasonable demand ("Please lend me lots of money to subsidize my drug addiction"), you say no, and they say they feel like you don't love them.
Maybe you speak out against a genocidal aggressive war. Someone complains that their family member died fighting in that war. They accuse you of implicitly dismissing their relative's sacrifice and calling them a bad person.
Maybe you argue that a suspect is innocent of a crime, and some unrelated crime victim says it triggers them when people question victims or advocate for the accused. They say that now they are re-traumatized.

I see three classes of potential response:

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/in-defense-of-im-sorry-you-feel-that

Your Book Review: The Complete Rhyming Dictionary and Poet's Craft Book (1936 Edition) Sep 17, 2024

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Finalist #10 in the Book Review Contest

[This is one of the finalists in the 2024 book review contest, written by an ACX reader who will remain anonymous until after voting is done. I'll be posting about one of these a week for several months. When you've read them all, I'll ask you to vote for a favorite, so remember which ones you liked]

Suppose you were a newcomer to English literature, and having heard of this artistic device called 'poetry', wondered what it was all about and where it came from. You might start by looking up some examples of poetry from each century, going back until you can't easily understand the English anymore, and find in the 16th century such poems as John Skelton's "Speke, Parott" [sic]:

My name is Parrot, a byrd of Paradyse, By Nature devised of a wonderowus kynde, Deyntely dyeted with dyvers dylycate spyce, Tyl Euphrates, that flode, dryveth me into Inde; Where men of that countrey by fortune me fynde, And send me to greate ladyes of estate; Then Parot must have an almon or a date.

The Compounding Loophole Sep 17, 2024

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Now that we've gone over the pharmacology of the GLP-1 agonists, let's get back to the economics.

Last time, we asked - how will the economy handle a $12,000/year drug that everyone wants?

Now we have an answer: the compounding loophole.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/the-compounding-loophole

Lukianoff And Defining Cancel Culture Sep 17, 2024

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In a recent post, I said that part of opposing cancel culture is to rigorously define it. Greg Lukianoff, president of FIRE, took up the challenge. His definition, first mentioned in his book Cancelling Of The American Mind, is:

Cancel Culture is the uptick, beginning around 2014 and accelerating in 2017 and after, of campaigns to get people fired, disinvited, deplatformed, or otherwise punished for speech that is — or would be — protected by First Amendment standards, and the climate of fear and conformity that has resulted from this uptick.

When I talk about wanting to "rigorously define it", I don't just mean the kind of definition you would put in a dictionary. Consider the debate around the definition of "woman". It's perfectly fine for a dictionary to say "you know, female person, opposite of male". But the debaters want something you can use to adjudicate edge cases.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/lukianoff-and-defining-cancel-culture

Your Book Review: Silver Age Marvel Comics Sep 09, 2024

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Finalist #9 in the Book Review Contest

You are a serious person with serious interests. The last comic book you read was more likely by Bryan Caplan than Jonathan Hickman. You would prefer to be reading high quality book reviews on AstralCodexTen. You believe ACX book reviews are usually more insightful than the books themselves, and a far more efficient use of your time. But even book reviews take time to process, and there are a lot of book reviews to read. Why spend your valuable time reading an 11,000 word review of superhero comic books?

That is the first question I aim to answer in this review. If I am successful, maybe you will invest a little more time to discover the answer to the next four questions.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-book-review-silver-age-marvel

Why Does Ozempic Cure All Diseases? Sep 09, 2024

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Fine, the title is an exaggeration. But only a small one. GLP-1 receptor agonist medications like Ozempic are already FDA-approved to treat diabetes and obesity. But an increasing body of research finds they're also effective against stroke, heart disease, kidney disease, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, alcoholism, and drug addiction.

There's a pattern in fake scammy alternative medicine. People get excited about some new herb. They invent a laundry list of effects: it improves heart health, softens menopause, increases energy, deepens sleep, clears up your skin. This is how you know it's a fraud. Real medicine works by mimicking natural biochemical signals. Why would you have a signal for "have low energy, bad sleep, nasty menopause, poor heart health, and ugly skin"? Why would all the herb's side effects be other good things? Real medications usually shift a system along a tradeoff curve; if they hit more than one system, the extras usually just produce side effects. If you're lucky, you can pick out a subset of patients for whom the intended effect is more beneficial than the side effects are bad. That's how real medicine works.

But GLP-1 drugs are starting to feel more like the magic herb. Why?

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/why-does-ozempic-cure-all-diseases

Your Book Review: How the War Was Won Aug 26, 2024

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To a first approximation, there are a million books about World War II. Why should you care about How the War Was Won (hereinafter "HtWWW") by Phillips Payson O'Brien?

It provides a new, transformative view of the conflict by focusing on production of key goods and what affected that production instead of the ups and downs of battles at the front.
That particular lens used can (and should) be applied outside of just World War II, and you can get a feel for how that might be done by reading HtWWW.
I have lectured about World War II and read many, many books about it. I have never texted friends more excerpts of a book than this one.

I have some criticisms of HtWWW, but if the criticisms dissuade you from reading the book, I will have failed. These complaints are like tut-tutting Einstein's penmanship.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-book-review-how-the-war-was

Highlights From The Comments On Nietzsche Aug 26, 2024

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[original post here]

Table Of Contents

I. Comments About Master And Slave Morality II. Comments By People Named In The Post III. Comments Making Specific Points About One Of The Thinkers In The Post IV. Other Comments

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/highlights-from-the-comments-on-nietzsche

Altruism And Vitalism As Fellow Travelers Aug 26, 2024

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Some commenters on the recent post accused me of misunderstanding the Nietzschean objection to altruism.

We hate altruism, they said, not because we're "bad and cruel", but because we instead support vitalism. Vitalism is a moral system that maximizes life, glory and strength, instead of maximizing happiness. Altruism is bad because it throws resources into helping sick (maybe even dysgenic) people, thus sapping our life, glory, and strength.

In a blog post (linked in the original post, discussed at length in the comments), Walt Bismarck compares the ultimate fate of altruism to WALL-E: a world where morbidly obese humans are kept in a hedonistic haze by robot servitors (although the more typical example I hear is tiling the universe with rats on heroin, which maximizes a certain definition of pleasure). In contrast, vitalism imagines a universe alive with dynamism, heroism, and great accomplishments.

My response: in most normal cases, altruism and vitalism suggest the same solutions.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/altruism-and-vitalism-as-fellow-travelers

Your Book Review: Two Arms and a Head Aug 26, 2024

Show notes

Content warning: body horror, existential devastation, suicide. This book is an infohazard that will permanently alter your view of paraplegia.

The Death of a Newly-Paraplegic Philosopher

For me, paraplegia and life itself are not compatible. This is not life, it is something else.

In May of 2006, philosophy student Clayton Schwartz embarks on a Pan-American motorcycle trip for the summer before law school. He is 30 years old and in peak physical condition.

He makes it as far south as Acapulco in Mexico before crashing into a donkey that had wandered into the road.

The impact crushes his spinal cord at the T5 vertebra, rendering him paralyzed from the nipples down.

On Sunday, February 24, 2008, he commits suicide.

In the year and a half in between, he writes Two Arms and a Head, his combination memoir and suicide note.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-book-review-two-arms-and-a-head

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