I Have Such Mixed Feelings About Nickland

3min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

Likean, i've never heard of the sky. He says that the nick land is in that terrifying border region where he's smart enough to figure out several important arcane principles about summoning demon gods but not quite smart enough to figures out the most important principle which is, never do that. But it feels like a really good description of people that i worry about, where they're really smart about certain things, but they're not smart about an important thing that's going to end up fucking all. I love th, the imagrythi lovecraft. And the the monster, or how you pronounce it, who ishis ancient god that lives in the depths, the depths of the sea

David and Tamler wind their way through the long-requested “Meditations on Moloch” by Scott Alexander, a comprehensive account of the coordination problems (personified by Allan Ginsberg’s demon-entity Moloch) that lead to human misery and values tossed out the window. Does Alexander’s rationalist conception of human nature ignore the work of VBW favorites like Joe Henrich and Robert Frank? Is he a little too friendly to the neo-social Darwinism view of some guy named Nick Land? And oh no, why does he have to go transhumanist at the end?! Plus, we talk about the unique comic vision of Norm Macdonald and why we loved him.