2024 is about to end, and I figured I should post something this year. So, I’ll just share a few thoughts that have accumulated.

First of all, my health seems to have stabilized since the surgery last year. I’m very happy about that. I am starting to feel old, but getting old seems much better than the alternative!

The October 7th attack by Hamas last year and the reactions by many people around the world to Israel’s response have been very depressing. I’m not sure if antisemitism is actually growing, or if people have just felt freer to express it publicly. Either way, it’s horrible. But it does make it easier to identify the people among us who have very bad moral frameworks. I hope, as always, that Israel gets through this safer than before.

Donald Trump will be the president again. I still think he’s an unqualified buffoon, and listening to him talk about foreigners and trade is painfully depressing, but I wasn’t sure whether this outcome would be worse than the major alternative. Harris would have been awful. And it’s good that she and the many others who conspired to deceive the American public about Biden’s health will suffer a loss of power and reputation. It’s also good that the targeted criminal prosecutions against Trump didn’t succeed.

I do see a glimmer of hope in the coming Department of Government Efficiency led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. I’m skeptical that they’ll roll back most of the wasteful spending and harmful regulations, but at least they might shift the conversation so that these will have to be justified a bit in the future, rather than the only question being the rate of their increase. Both men are very smart and competent, and I wish them the best. I just don’t think they’ll be able to overcome the inertia of vast government agencies without very broad public support.

I’m also heartened by the successes of Javier Milei in Argentina and his explicitly libertarian agenda. He seems to have been very successful at reducing inflation, cutting spending, improving housing, etc. Many of the reforms will take time to show their full positive effects. Hopefully he will remain popular enough for long enough for that to be allowed to happen!

Happy New Year, everyone!

I realize that my previous post indicated that I’d need heart surgery, but I never followed up with the results. So, I thought I’d let those few who might have been interested know that the surgery happened on October 3, and was completely successful. In addition to the two valves (one replaced and one repaired) I had a double bypass, and an atrial appendage ligation. It’s been twelve weeks since then, and I’m feeling much better and should now be able to resume any activities without any limitations (from the surgery; not physics).

I know that people love to ridicule the American medical system, but my experiences with my surgeon, care team, and insurance company were all excellent.

It was a difficult year for me, but it’s ending pretty well.

I hope we all have a great 2024!

I’m going to die.

So are you.

This isn’t a newsflash. We all know that we’ll die someday, but we’re very good at not thinking about it most of the time.

What brought my death to mind recently is that two of my heart valves are not working properly and I’m going to have open-heart surgery to replace/repair them. And during the discussion with my surgeon, the odds of severe consequences, including death, was mentioned.

In addition, during the discussion of the pros and cons of valve replacement using mechanical vs. animal tissue valves, the doctor said that although the animal tissue variety don’t last as long (10-15 years) and could need to be replaced by a catheter-based procedure in the future, I probably wouldn’t outlive them. I’m sure he meant that last comment as a mitigation of the “con” of the lower durability of the valve, but what I heard was: “You’re probably going to die in less than 12 years!”.

Am I afraid of dying?

Well, my initial, emotional, reaction is: “YES!” I don’t want to die. I want to continue creating and appreciating creative solutions to problems, and cleverness in general. I want to enjoy beauty and humor. I have people who depend on me whom I want to support for as long as I can, and others whose company and interactions I enjoy and would like to keep enjoying. I’m curious to see where technology goes, particularly AI, space travel, and virtual reality (I’d like a holodeck please).

My more philosophical answer is: “No”. I’m afraid of suffering or living without the ability to enjoy life as a dignified human being, but I’m not afraid of a world without me living in it. I’m not afraid of the 1950’s, when I wasn’t alive; so why should I be afraid of the 2050’s, when I (probably) won’t be alive?

And you will not be seeing any deathbed conversions from me. There is no new theological evidence, so there’s no good reason to update my position that the God hypothesis is a bad explanation for anything.

I don’t agree with some people that limited lifespans make life better, more valuable. I think it would be better if they were longer, even indefinitely long, and some “people” might achieve that. But I (probably) won’t be among them. In any case, it’s clear to me that the dragon is bad!

I do agree that thinking about death can serve as a good reminder that since our lifetimes are limited, we should cherish the time we have, and avoid squandering it. So, I’ll try to be better at that. Maybe you should, too.

(I’m reproducing an old Facebook post of mine so that I at least post something this year!)

I’m thankful for my family, my friends, good-willed strangers, my health, my home, the Enlightenment, the Internet, living in a relatively free country (if we don’t fuck it up) where we can peacefully pursue our own projects and express our differences without much fear of coercive repression, being part of a relatively free market economy (if we don’t fuck it up) where we can all benefit each other using our own chosen specializations and see and expect amazing improvements in the world over time…

Key Takeaways:

• We have a lot of things to be thankful for
• Don’t fuck them up
• It’s tempting to work political points into any discussion

I have been neglecting this blog, and decided to write something before the end of the year.

I thought I’d write a note praising the Jonathan Rauch book: The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth.

Rauch analogizes the written Constitution of the United States, to the unwritten constitution of knowledge, which includes the framework that best allows us to approach the truth. This constitution requires that enough people respect some basic rules (like fallibilism: no theory is immune to criticism or being replaced by a better one, and empiricism: nobody has special authority; claims can be checked by anybody). He elaborates on this in detail, and very well.

The bottom line is that political (classical) liberalism has adopted this framework, and this has been fantastic for human progress. Rauch sees many things that are currently threatening it today and has a lot to say about what’s wrong and what we might do to make it better.

To be honest, I’m only 60% of the way through it, but I can already recommend it highly.

And…Happy New Year!

One of the few silver-lining outcomes from Covid has been the increase in the number of kids who are now being homeschooled. I realize that it’s not possible for everybody to do (and some kids might even do better in schools), but I think it’s a great option, and a promising trend.

First of all, I’m sorry I haven’t posted in a while. I’ve been finding most recent developments in the world more depressing than thought provoking.

It’s been quite frustrating witnessing all of the divisiveness online regarding Covid-19, masks, lockdowns, etc. Somehow rather than coming together to battle a common enemy we have continued to divide up into tribes and make everything about signaling our membership in the right group.

Another thing that’s been happening has been the protests following the terrible death (murder) of George Floyd. Again, somehow rather than getting together to think about how policing and the laws around it should be reformed, most people have managed to divide up into those who support the police and those who don’t.

But, the topic of this post is Cancel Culture: the phenomenon of responding to speakers of “unacceptable” ideas, not by criticizing those ideas, but by attempting to silence the speakers either by removing them from their platforms or ruining their careers, or shaming people who associate with them, etc.

As should be obvious from my previous posts, I view this as a terrible development. Of course, I agree that this kind of response should be legal. It’s not a first amendment issue if private people are persuading others to shun people, but it’s also very unhealthy for individualism and the growth of knowledge. I would very much prefer a culture of toleration and criticism.

But, rather than me opining about this, I think we’d all be better off listening to Jonathan Rauch (author of the excellent Kindly Inquisitors and signatory to the Harper’s Open Letter), who is one of the clearest thinkers around on this topic, and he spoke elequently about all of this recently on a reason podcast with Nick Gillespie.

I’ll try to embed the audio here as well:

Most of the people whom I read, and respect, seem convinced that COVID-19 will almost certainly be a national and global healthcare disaster that justifies just about anything that governments are willing to do to control it and mitigate its effects.

Richard Epstein, who I also read and respect, thinks they’re wrong.

He thinks that these doomsday predictions are based on worst-case estimates that have lots of problems, and they do not take into account the evidence we have from this and earlier novel viruses, or the mitigation that will come from the human action that will reduce the speed and extent of the harm.  He thinks the economic harm caused by overreacting to the threat will cause more harm.

I’m not sure who is right. 

I do know that my natural bias is to believe the Epstein story, because it takes into account the power of widespread, local, solutions and the limitations of top-down draconian measures.  It argues against huge government power growth, which is likely to have many bad effects that will persist long after this incident is over.  It’s the story that I really prefer to believe.

Because of this bias, I’m trying to discount the Epstein analysis and assume the real threat is probably worse than he thinks, but possibly not as bad as the most extreme alarmists claim.

I suppose I can take comfort in the fact that whatever I think the truth of the matter probably is will have no measurable effect on what ultimately happens.

I guess we’ll see who turns out to be right.  But, it could be the case that Epstein’s estimates turn out to be more accurate, but only because most people believe in the more extreme estimates and alter their behavior enough to slow things to a more manageable pace.

We’re living in interesting times.

It looks like I’ll be having more time to blog now, if I can think of anything interesting to say.

Today I learned that I’m part of the one third of the company’s workforce that has been cut for the necessary “Reduction In Force”.

A pandemic wasn’t bad enough, it seems.

I’m still trying to be optimistic, but the world is making it harder and harder to do.