We Are Not Saved

Jeremiah
  • 4.7 (18)
  • CHRISTIANITY
  • UPDATED WEEKLY

We Are Not Saved discusses religion (from a Christian/LDS perspective), politics, the end of the world, science fiction, artificial intelligence, and above all the limits of technology and progress.

  1. 2D AGO

    Rise and Fall of the Third Reich - A Series of Unfortunate Events

    A book full of potential comparisons to our own day for the motivated, and strangely removed from our own day if you're really going to be honest about it.  The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany By: William L. Shirer Published: 1960 1250 Pages Briefly, what is this book about? A comprehensive history of Nazi Germany, from Hitler's birth to the Nuremberg trials. Written by someone who was there for a great deal of the most important period. What authorial biases should I be aware of? Shirer is a journalist, not a historian, but he did have access to the German state and party archives, plus some diaries, etc. that were captured at the end of the war. Plus he witnessed the rise of Hitler in the 30's. I love passages like this: No wonder that Hitler was in a confident mood when the Nazi Party Congress assembled in Nuremberg on September 4 [1934]. I watched him on the morning of the next day stride like a conquering emperor down the center aisle of the great flag-bedecked Luitpold Hall while the band blared forth "The Badenweiler March" and thirty thousand hands were raised in the Nazi salute. Who should read this book? It's clear that this isn't the most accurate book about this subject. Scholarship is always advancing and this was written more than 60 years ago. But it may be the most readable book on the subject. It flows very well. 1250 pages fly by. (Or rather the minutes fly by, I listened to it, but with a physical copy for reference and anchoring.) If you're at all interested in this period I think you'll really enjoy this book. What does the book have to say about the future? I think a lot of people are trying to draw comparisons between the rise of Hitler and the Trump phenomenon. Other people see echoes of fascism in the ubiquity of woke-ism. I don't think history is going to repeat. And I'm not even sure it's going to rhyme this time around. People are still too aware of the dangers of populist demagoguery for someone to come to power in the same way Hitler did. Which is not to say there's nothing to be gleaned from this book, but I suspect that by the time things start lining up, in some bizarre fashion, it will be too late. Specific thoughts: Pivot points

    12 min

  2. FEB 5

    Radical Markets - I Mean Really Radical

    Policy proposals from the White Queen. (It's a Lewis Carroll reference. No, I'm not talking about the Mad Hatter or the Red Queen. It's from "Through the Looking Glass".)  Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society By: Eric A. Posner and Eric Glen Weyl Published: 2019 384 Pages Briefly, what is this book about? A series of radical proposals for restructuring property, voting, immigration, investing, and employment. All of the proposals seek to solve the problem of "monopolized or missing markets" in ways that seem pretty strange. One has to wonder if there's a good reason those markets didn't exist in the first place.  What authorial biases should I be aware of? Posner has his finger in all sorts of things, and has defended everything from post-9/11 government surveillance to increasing foreign aid. I guess the throughline is a belief in technocratic solutions? Weyl is an economist working for Microsoft who helped popularize the idea of quadratic voting, and had a political awakening while reading Ayn Rand. This feels more like his book than Posner's but perhaps I'm imagining that. Who should read this book? I read this as part of an ACX/SSC book club. Most of the people didn't like it. They felt that it was too radical. (Though you can't say we weren't warned, it's right there in the title.) But if you want to see what mechanisms Georgist economists come up with when they're completely unrestrained, this might be the book for you. What does the book have to say about the future? Hayek is famous for noting that the big advantage of markets is that they are giant distributed systems for discovering prices and allocating resources effectively. They're obviously not perfect, and socialists have long dreamt of having a centrally planned economy that would be fairer and work better. Posner and Weyl imagine a future where computing power and machine learning could take over some of the work currently being done by markets, and thereby improve the outcomes. Specific thoughts: "Six impossible things before breakfast"

    10 min

  3. FEB 3

    Gemini Goes Insane — How Should I Update? [Essay]

    One part documentation of a strange AI hallucination. One part panic about whether I'll be put out of business by AI.

    26 min

  4. JAN 30

    Goliath's Curse (and the Agents of Doom!)

    Using the Stone of Democracy to Slay the Goliath of Inequality Goliath's Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse By: Luke Kemp Published: 2025 592 Pages Briefly, what is this book about? By most accounts, civilization, which is to say the large Hobbesian state, is a good thing. Kemp doesn't necessarily agree. In his account, states are lumbering, tyrannical, extractive Goliaths, cursed to grow bigger, more oppressive and more brittle until they are eventually brought down by a "stone" that hits in just the right place.  Civilization forms out of dominance hierarchies, and these hierarchies generally only move in one direction, towards greater inequality, greater extraction, and more self-interested decisions. This leads to ever increasing fragility and eventual collapse. Collapse might actually be a better place for the masses of people, though it's often quite bloody to get there. Though if that's how it played out in the past, Kemp doesn't think it will necessarily play out that way going forward. If (when?) civilization collapses this time, it will be far more apocalyptic.  What authorial biases should I be aware of? Kemp is associated with the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at Cambridge. I was recommended this book by the sagacious Florian U. Jehn of the excellent Existential Crunch blog. Jehn knows his stuff which gives me the confidence to safely locate Kemp as an important scholar in the genre of collapse research, with an interesting, albeit populist/anti-elite take on the subject. Who should read this book? Kemp draws heavily on the ideas of James C. Scott (Seeing Like a State and Against the Grain) and writes in opposition to the ideas of Steven Pinker (in particular The Better Angels of Our Nature). If you find yourself similarly situated, you'll enjoy this book.  It's also a great book for anyone who can't get enough discussion of existential risk. And really given the stakes we should be considering as many viewpoints as possible. What does the book have to say about the future? As you might imagine, Kemp's vision of the future is pretty bleak. He is not a techno-optimist, rather he sees in technology the emergence of a new Goliath, a new arena of dominance and extraction. He has a certain amount of hope, but it all revolves around using democracy to disrupt the ratcheting up of inequality and elite power, which seems like a tall order.  Specific thoughts: Past, present, and future collapse

    20 min

  5. JAN 28

    Knowing Our Limits - Epistemology Without Bayes

    I was promised useful stories to assist me in a quest for justified belief. Instead I got a lesson in the limits of expertise. Unfortunately it was the author's expertise that was limited.  Knowing Our Limits By: Nathan Ballantyne Published: 2019 344 Pages Briefly, what is this book about? Regulative epistemology as opposed to descriptive epistemology. Put more simply, this is about how to find truth, as opposed to how to define truth. Though because the author recommends having very high standards, you may come away from the book thinking that there is no truth. That is not Ballantyne's intent, but most of his guidance revolves around less confidence rather than more confidence. There is some good stuff about tolerance, and the utility of doubt. And while I take issue with some of what he says on the subject of expertise, he covers the subject exhaustively and thought-provokingly. What authorial biases should I be aware of? Ballantyne isn't just interested in epistemology. He doesn't dabble in it. He is epistemology, or rather an epistemologist. Accordingly, even though it's apparent that he's trying really, really hard to not make the book overly academic, it's still pretty academic. For example: If an undefeated defeater for believing p were included in the evidence I don't have, then I (probably) would have heard of it by now. But I have not heard of it and the "silence" gives me reason to think that the unpossessed defeater is probably defeated. He's a big fan of the word defeater, and various constructions involving the word. In the course of a few pages he uses the term "defeater-defeater" seventeen times. Who should read this book? Epistemological collapse is the major crisis of our time, so on some level it's probably useful to read everything you can get your hands on. (Which was my big reason for reading it.) But, as much as I crap on Yudkowsky's Rationality: From AI to Zombies I'd probably read his chapters on Bayes' Theorem before reading this.  I heard about the book on Jesse Singal's substack. He was much more bullish on it. So you might read that if you're interested or on the fence. Specific thoughts: Lots of epistemic tools, Ballantyne really only covers one

    10 min

  6. JAN 17

    A YA Series, a First Contact Novel, and a Startup Book Walk Into a Bar—Pursued by Wolves

    The Westmark Trilogy by: Lloyd Alexander RoadKill by: Dennis E. Taylor Slicing Pie Handbook: Perfectly Fair Equity Splits for Bootstrapped Startups by: Mike Moyer Fables for Young Wolves by: Thomas O. Bethlehem

    12 min

  7. JAN 16

    The Origin of Politics - Kibbutzim, Chimps, and Children

    Would you like some genetics in your politics? The Origin of Politics: How Evolution and Ideology Shape the Fate of Nations – Social Disintegration, Birth Rates, and the Path to Extinction By: Nicholas Wade Published: 2025 256 Pages Briefly, what is this book about? Wade offers up an evolutionary psychology account of how to make politics actually function; how, when you try to disconnect politics and the exercise of power from core human nature, as shaped by evolution, things go off the rails.  What authorial biases should I be aware of? Nicholas Wade worked as a science writer for the NYT for 30 years. For the bulk of those years he was the science and health editor. He left the paper in 2012 and in 2014 he published A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History. The book argued that human evolution is ongoing and that it has been "recent, copious, and regional". The regional part got him "cancelled" or at least it attracted a lot of negative attention, since it implied that differing national outcomes might be partly genetic in nature rather than wholly the result of chance, culture, or colonization.  Who should read this book? If you're looking for a strong pushback against blank-slateism along with a defense of the traditional nation-state (and of tradition in general). Or if you're looking for another reason to worry about decreasing fertility.  What does the book have to say about the future? The aforementioned fertility decline looms large in his warnings about the future, but as I mentioned he also warns about any policy that tries to exercise power in ignorance of evolutionary drives. One of the major drives is tribalism and immigration directly conflicts with that instinct. All of this points to the potential for a demographically declining society with lots of disorder.  Specific thoughts: Children are the ultimate civilizational scorecard

    10 min

  8. JAN 11

    A Case for Latter-Day Christianity - (i.e. A Case for the Christianity of Mormons)

    I feel like I should make some clever connection between this book and the discussion which raged about the Shroud of Turin, but nothing occurs to me. A Case for Latter-day Christianity: Evidences for the Restoration of the New Testament's "Mere" Christian Church By: Robert Starling Published: 2019 360 Pages Briefly, what is this book about? A broad, and intensive defense of the theology of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). With a special focus on tying that theology to the theology of the early Christian Church. As such it spends a lot of time examining differences between LDS theology and other Christian denominations (things like the Trinity, Grace, The Book of Mormon, etc.) and how those differences look in relation to actual scripture. What authorial biases should I be aware of? Starling has obviously been compiling stuff and working the "Mormons are Christians" beat for a long time. Which is to say he definitely has a dog in the fight. This gives the work a somewhat tendentious tinge.  What about my biases? I met Starling at a conference and he asked me to read his book. Outside of that meeting and a follow-up email he sent me there hasn't been any further interaction. So I wouldn't say we were close. I am however pretty close to the topic of "Latter-day Christianity", so that's a pretty big bias.  Who should read this book? Anyone who wants to see the comprehensive case for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints being the same Church Jesus Christ established in the 1st Century.   Specific thoughts: Who is this book for?

    7 min
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4.7
out of 5
18 Ratings

About

We Are Not Saved discusses religion (from a Christian/LDS perspective), politics, the end of the world, science fiction, artificial intelligence, and above all the limits of technology and progress.

Information

  • Creator
    Jeremiah
  • Years Active
    2016 - 2026
  • Episodes
    483
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2016 Ross W. Richey
  • Show Website
    We Are Not Saved

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