This is actually our second go around for a main segment. A bunch of listeners throughout the years have asked us to do meditations on molok by the blogger scott alexander. It's a very long piece and a very big piece of work, like i don't know how to get into it. So we just did this mark's episode, which i thought, like, the response to it was, on the whole, really good.
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.
Sponsored By:
Support Very Bad Wizards
Links: