Links and snippets, January 2025
What I've been reading recently
UK and Ireland
Sean O’Neill McPartlin on the benefits of more specific planning rules:
Barra Roantree on Ireland procedure fetish, a nice development of the original procedure fetish critique from the United States:
Saunderson points out on Twitter that the UK has its own version of the procedure fetish.
Sam Bowman explains how to create more win-win policy solutions on the 80,000 Hours podcast. This was an excellent episode. Sam shows that well designed policies can command broad political support and achieve good outcomes. This is a good rejoinder to those who think change can only come through defeating your enemies politically.
Janan Ganesh on how the UK doesn’t really want growth:
A thousand newspaper editorials will tell you that Britain lacks a “growth strategy”. If that means policies, then Britain lacks no such thing, and almost never has. What is missing might be better called a “growth preference”: a settled view that, when growth comes into conflict with another goal, growth must prevail.
Let me come at the point from another angle. What was America’s growth strategy this past couple of decades? Under which administration was it published? Can someone send me a link?
Related: Tom Forth on why the North of England is poor (still making my way through this one).
AI & Tech
You’d have thought the Stargate Project (OpenAI’s $500bn spend on data centres) would be the news of the month, but everyone is going crazy over Deepseek. Ben Thompson has perhaps the definitive take, worth reading even if you don’t follow every single sentence. Chinatalk is producing great and very timely analysis too. Here are various MR posts on Deepseek.
Tanner Greer says the AI labs are full of people who want to merge humanity with AI.
Jason Hausenloy argues AI is now an engineering problem, not a scientific one.
The UK now has an AI plan.
Project 11 is thinking ahead.
Solar deployment chart has an evil twin:
Christianity
Christian apologist Wes Huff appeared on Joe Rogan. Especially notable given Rogan used to rubbish Christianity. Glen Scrivener provides a summary and commentary. Wes fact checks himself.
Clement Knox argues that the loss of Britain’s Christianity has undermined its humanity and morality, even Britain itself. Many people seem to agree, but how many of them were in church on Sunday?
Maybe some of them were – there is some evidence of religious revival among young Britons.
USA politics
Peter Thiel says the Trump administration is a time for truth and reconciliation. It does indeed seem that truths will come out. We’ve already heard about the NJ drones, and the JFK files are due to be released in the coming weeks. (Why did this piece run in the FT of all places?)
Very interesting Marc Andreessen interview by Ross Douthat, on how tech shifted right (Spotify).
Great piece explaining the Trump phenomenon among young men in particular.
Tanner Greer comments:
Not representative: all the books, the drive to read about ancient times and do serious humanities studies, debating high politics, conservative authorities as family exemplars.
All that stuff is for a minority of a minority.
Ezra Klein responds to Trump’s victory and makes a prediction.
Miscellaneous
Tanner Greer has an excellent write up on his trip to India:
I wish the American right took Asia more seriously. Its peoples face geopolitical, economic, demographic, and technological dilemmas on a scale closer to our own. In a few of these countries conservative/nationalist parties have been immensely successful. Japan and India are especially interesting case studies here: both have been governed by electoral machines that consistently deliver victory to rightwing forces.
That’s just one of many interesting points in the piece. Frankly, however, I’m uncomfortable with the obvious ethno-nationalism of the Indian right in particular. Political movements of any kind in the West should reject that outright. It disappoints me, for example, that a senior BJP figure was a speaker at NatCon in 2024.
Philo at MD&A explains why smart people become married to stupid ideas:
Nabeel shares his principles:
I really like #6, #11, #39, and #48.
However, I have a few points of disagreement. For instance, #16: “If you find yourself dreading Mondays, quit.” Much of the world would grind to a halt if this advice was taken too seriously. Even if you just focus on startups, the most successful companies are probably the ones where the employees are being pushed hard and there is some dread of Monday. See also #32: “Don’t let anyone make you feel small.”
Lyman Stone has a Substack now:
Alvaro De Menard returns with some book recommendations and anti-recommendations.
I really hope that Alvaro’s post encourages everyone to read Camille Paglia’s Sexual Personae. It is so joyfully expansive and endlessly quotable.