Monthly Archives: April 2023

P.S.

April 27, 2023 – 6:22 pm
This entry is part 2 of 7 in the series Accelerationism

My old friend Bill Vallicella, the Maverick Philosopher, has put up an item about my “accelerationism” post, and some discussion has ensued in the comment-thread. You can read it here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics, Reaction, Society and Culture | Comments (3)

Should We All Now Be Accelerationists?

April 25, 2023 – 4:23 pm
This entry is part 1 of 7 in the series Accelerationism

In case you haven’t noticed, America, and the West more generally, are falling to pieces. How so? Here’s a brief, but far from exhaustive, list: — Public confidence in the government and media are at all-time lows; — The printing of money in order to support government spending at an astronomical rate has triggered dangerous […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Politics, Reaction, Ruminations | Comments (11)

Wait – What?

April 24, 2023 – 5:52 pm

The big item in today’s news was that Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox has come to an abrupt end. This is a watershed in American media history (and likely no small moment in America’s political history, too). For starters: Fox News just became completely irrelevant. An enormous number of that outlet’s subscribers, who saw saw […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture | Comments (2)

On Ukraine, Being Lied To, And Lying To Ourselves

April 20, 2023 – 7:45 pm

Some of the most interesting conversations in all of media for many years now have been the periodic discussions that John Batchelor has had on his radio program with thinkers such as law professor Richard Epstein, the late Russia scholar Stephen F. Cohen, and war historian Michael Vlahos. For a couple of years Batchelor and […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Foreign Affairs | Comments (2)

Form, Matter, And The Corruption Of Sovereigns

April 18, 2023 – 12:59 pm

Here’s a thread I posted on Twitter earlier today: When a computer stays on too long, with bloated apps running and leaking resources, it stops working well. What do you do? You reboot it. If that doesn’t work, you do a factory reset. You do whatever it takes to make a clean start. What does […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Ruminations | Comments (5)

Does Civilization Still Make Sense?

April 16, 2023 – 6:33 pm

An important concept, and one that I’ve written about myself, is the idea of “time preference”: how willing a person is to defer present consumption or enjoyment in order to earn a dividend in the future. The classic example is the “marshmallow test”, in which small children are given a marshmallow, told that the adult […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, General | Comments (4)

What Next?

April 15, 2023 – 6:33 pm

Sorry to have gone quiet again. I’m now back at home in Wellfleet after spending a few days in New York City (where we’ve spent much less time since selling our house in Brooklyn in October of 2021). I’m glad to be back on my little dirt road in the woods — NYC this time […]

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (5)

Happy Easter

April 9, 2023 – 10:09 pm

“Man as man is conscious of the need of protection and direction, of cleansing from uncleanness, of power beyond his own strength. Through a multiplicity of forms, in different ages and races, this consciousness has sought expression, until at last it finds utterance in an insistent demand for God. Fear, ancestor worship, the personification of […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Inner Work, Religion, Ruminations | Comments (1)

Close Encounters

April 5, 2023 – 6:45 pm

It’s jarring when, at a dinner gathering or small social event, you encounter a mind that conceives reality in a way so utterly, radically, axiomatically alien that you cannot believe you both could possibly inhabit the same objectively existing world. This happened to me recently at a friend’s house. The person in question — a […]

By Malcolm | Posted in General, Society and Culture | Comments (16)

Skyfall

April 2, 2023 – 7:44 pm

Woody Allen once wrote: “More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.” On March 29th, Time magazine published an article by Eliezer Yudkowski titled “Pausing AI Developments Isn’t Enough. […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Science, Technology | Comments (1)