A friend gave me this book expecting me to critique it.
It strikes me as a techno-hippy trying to reach out to Scott Alexander (ssc) telling him to get some empathy. But also bleh. I am not the target audience for this book by a long shot.
It also constructs all of its arguments using general public understanding of liberal history, which is fine as a starting point rhetorically, but it does not follow it up or critique that perception even when arguing against the liberal assumptions. (Well, mostly, it did say that Bill Gates philanthropy was ineffective in combating malaria as it didn't target the real cause (poverty), but thoe moments are rare and brief)
I cry
(Also, book repeatedly uses Elon Musk as a great man genius, routinely solving problems far beyond most people)
My first thought when he was discussing "Meaning 1.0" as religion (really, his conception of Christianity which he conflates to all religions since the agrarian revolution)
That is a nonsensical definition of modernism. It couldn't even approach describing any of the existing definitions. I don't think I've even seen something described as "anti-fragile" and wouldn't use it to describe anything about modernism or even the contemporary postmodern world.
👏adults👏have👏an👏obligation👏to👏read👏books👏and👏know👏what👏words👏mean👏
"anti-fragile"
In his "framework", he refers to "warlordism" (what we might call variations on feudal and earlier societies, what I would tentatively call "aristocratic" societies) where society is ruled by a few families of large adult sons with weapons by virtue of violence. He says he thinks of it as "very robust" as it has been around for a long time (regardless of the particular dominance of any one particular lineage; a critique that I immediately spotted and will assume he is assuming despite the fact he does not raise it). Under "warlordism" he cites Mongols and the Taliban and refers to many such instances in "the third world". He ignores "Liberal Democracies" participation in many such warlords and views the modern examples of these systems as atomic.
As a "fragile" system, he does use the example of communism only surviving 80 years (PRC doesn't count, presumably because they have markets now). Whig history of the USSR is assumed here, see the rest of hexbear for counter-arguments/examples.
He describes "Meaning 2.0" (what we'd call Liberalism and/or Capitalism, I guess) as being somewhere in the middle of these two.
He wants his future system (whatever it will be called, presumably later in the book) to be robust.
To be about as fair as I can be, he is writing for a pretty common person in the tech community, and his goal seems to be trying to move them away from right wing libertarian/alt right spaces and into his own culture of "liberal, but comfortable with drugs, sex, and spirituality". However banal that goal is, he does have to engage with their understanding of history and politics.
I am sure pretty much anyone here could pick this apart just from vibes, but this is a tiny section of this book. He doesn't go particularly deep into any topic, but look at how long we could talk about just this little bit, let alone any single sentence or paragraph example he uses as supporting evidence.
I also have a certain disdain for "techbro philosophers" feeling the need to reinvent the language they use to describe anything in philosophy or politics. Like, I get part of the reason is to make it readable to your audience, I just cringe. LessWrong, SSC, this book etc. are pretty repeated examples of this.
Even when I was a LessWrong adjacent techbro-brained redditor SSC gave me fucked vibes.
On the plus side, it did help me realize that Harry Potter was dogshit years before most people.
