[newsletter]
Great Spirits of History and other things
6 Sep 2024
Hello,
Here’s everything since my last little missive to you:
Excerpt: There’s this quote that floats around sometimes. It goes something like:‘If you don’t do the thinking, the thinking will be done for you’. This is usually presented like a bad thing, but really it’s often the only way to navigate the complexity of the world. Here’s one little tool for doing just that.
Main idea: The ‘Great Man’ theory of history has the history of ideas moved forward by individuals. But by thinking of these as ‘Great Ideas’, or better ‘spirits’ of ideas, we’re encouraged to examine their motivations, which is surprisingly effective.
How Syria Broke Turkey. Interesting throughout
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On the ‘targeted’ community of positive psychosis
Journalists often depict the TI community as a postmodern tragedy – a byproduct of unregulated social media. Here are thousands of very sick people, we’re told, who are just reinforcing each other’s delusions and making each other sicker because they refuse to see psychiatrists
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What if the TI community is an inevitable reaction to the shortcomings of medical psychiatry itself? Put differently, what if medical psychiatry is inadvertently pushing people like Luca deeper into the TI community?
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On neuroarchitecture. Ridiculous sounding name, but interesting throughout:
We spend a lot of time in places with spatial stressors and this could gradually affect our mental health
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A simple theory of which thinkers support the elites, or not:
Most “heterodox” thinkers like to think they are encouraging a more nuanced understanding of when the elites are right and when they are wrong. And indeed that is what some of their more perceptive readers take away. But their overall important gross effect is typically to raise the status of elites. They make the public discussion of issues better and more vibrant (one hopes). And thus, if only in a longer run, the status of elites goes up. Sorry buddy, I know that wasn’t exactly your goal!
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It’s easy to hack airplane wifi. Obviously illegal, but interesting how weak the protections are on these things. Makes one wonder how secure my own wifi is.
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The academic origins of bitcoin. Dry but interesting.
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I hope you found something interesting.
You can find links to all my previous missives here.
Warm regards,