This is the weekly visible open thread. Post about anything you want, ask random questions, whatever. ACX has an unofficial subreddit, Discord, and bulletin board, and in-person meetups around the world. Most content is free, some is subscriber only; you can subscribe here. Also:
1: Meetups this week include Ann Arbor, Bangkok, Brussels, Cape Town, Charlotte, Frankfurt, Kyiv, Lisbon, Madrid, Paris, Portland, Philadelphia, San Jose, Santa Cruz, Sydney, Waterloo, and others; see the meetup post for more information. And Prague and St. Louis have been added to the list for October.
2: Comments of the week: neuroscientists on the synaptic memory review (1, 2, 3); comments by Eliezer on my review of his book (on when to lift a ban, on the parallel scaling story)
3: New subscribers-only post, I’m Gruesome For Newsom:
The case for Gavin Newsom is simple. The Republicans nominated someone with no positive qualities, and they won bigly. Now it is our turn to nominate someone with no positive qualities.
Positive qualities, the case goes, are overrated. They can get you a billion dollars, or a Nobel, or some other consolation prize. To become President, you must be chosen by God.
Donald Trump was chosen by God. You can tell because he's invincible. He can wriggle out of scandals that would sink Tricky Dick Nixon ten times over. He can run on a platform of punishing illegal immigrants, and the illegal immigrants themselves will rally to his banner. He can support Israel harder than anyone has ever supported it before, and Arab-Americans will break fifty years of Voting Blue No Matter Who to march behind him. He can get 100% evangelical backing while oozing contempt for Christianity, 100% libertarian support while trampling the Constitution, and 100% allegiance from Wall Street while dismantling global trade. KKK wizards and celebrity rappers compete to compliment him loudest; Nazis and the ADL jostle past each other to sing his praises. Shooting him in the head only makes him stronger.
To posit Trump's divine election is not to imply he has any positive qualities. When the Israelites stopped obeying the commandments, God punished them by raising an incompetent idolator named Jeroboam to the throne. Jeroboam started a disastrous war that killed 500,000 of his own men, after which his dynasty collapsed and his entire family was slain. Jeroboam was chosen by God to crush and humiliate Israel. But he was chosen by God. Has America been obeying the commandments lately?
The Bible describes the specific way that divine election works . . .
Read it here.
