If we can compare the intellectual environment of the 2000s to the post-2008 period, there used to be a much more vigorous sphere of public debate. This shifted over to the COVID style (avant la lettre) of argument by assertion and by factional association. If you did not "believe" in global warming, you were a bad person or just irresponsible even if your objection was based on criticisms of data collection or analysis methodology or what-have-you. Over time this greatly diminished the prestige of intellectuals because idiots can just assert things; you do not need sophisticates to do it. Now they have developed computer systems that can convincingly assert arguments without evidence, so the shoddy intellectuals are no longer needed.
What keeps coming to mind for me is the similar degeneration of the online gaming medium, which is an internet medium just like the new public discourse. The assumption of the online game is that players by skill and dedication will become excellent, and thus win competitions and gain prestige among players. This assumption was subverted by software and hardware cheating, automation by software, and the corruption of real money used to buy game assets. This also struck sports; it's not about the players and their coaches but the players, coaches, their doctors, and their pharmacologists.
With the discourse, if you want to obtain a political outcome, would you be better off donating a big jet to the president, or paying for discourse? Obviously, you will get much farther with just paying people off. Maintaining republican discourse requires the maintenance of certain non-commercial ideals of sportsmanship by force. The old critique of commercial republics is that you can just bribe their leaders to defeat it in detail.
About the Noah Smith reflection - not sure if this was already cited (by Smith or Renn), but the noted self-help author Tim Ferriss has candidly posted that AI is basically eating up that niche.
"If the run-rate holds, my catalog will sell roughly 80% fewer print copies in 2026 than it did in 2022, with almost all of that happening since LLMs like Claude and ChatGPT exploded in use."
There is a lot of writing that will go the way of the buggy whip. My very conservative predictions are that
1. as always, the top 10-20%, with plenty of cultural, social, emotional, and intellectual capital, will find a way to make the new regime work for them - let's see if they can make it work for the bottom 80-90%
2. writing, or creative activity of any kind, will only survive to the extent that an audience feels a human, personal connection to the creator and says: "I personally like this person/people, and I want him/her/them to succeed. I endorse their project as consonant with my values. I am voting for them with my dollars." Hard to see how anyone pays anything for culture otherwise.
What you mean as factionalism is white men actually looking out for their own interests for a change. As long as you promote race and sex quotas, disparate impact cudgels and import more hostile groups you are going to have that kind of "factionalism" I would think.
For the simple reason that for all the rhetoric about high ideals everyone wants to live where the whites live. And send their kids to the whitest schools. With whites becoming a minority, property values will move further apart. As in ultra-liberal DC where similar property in Upper Caucasia NW quadrant is 3 to 9 times more expensive than vibrant SE quadrant.
And the national debt will accelerate this process, especially when the dollar loses its reserve currency status.
From a physical health standpoint, the advice that gets you most of the way there is remarkably simple:
1) Eat a variety of foods, not too much. Mostly (but not entirely) from plant origins. Too much is actually pretty easy to tell: are you over fat? Then eat somewhat less every day until you're not. Unless you're a dedicated weight lifter or extremely tall or short, BMI actually works pretty well for risk stratification here.
2) drink plenty of water.
3) don't drink alcohol, smoke, or do other recreational drugs.
4) some physical activity every day. include both cardio and resistance training; do varieties of each that you enjoy and can stick to. Make a point of slowly progressing over time in intensity, but no need to go crazy with that.
5) Spend time, real quality time, with friends, family, loved ones. stay emotionally and socially connected.
6) Don't stress yourself out too much with job, or other obsessions (such as health fanaticism).
7) Get check ups regularly, and if real medical conditions are identified, follow your health practitioner's advice, take your medications consistently, etc.
8) Do some stretching every day to maintain your mobility and flexibility. Especially hips and legs
9) Avoid obviously dangerous stuff like driving without a seatbelt on, hanging out around people with a penchant for violence, etc.
10) Wear sunscreen daily, brush your teeth, use dental floss daily.
11) Actively make a point of doing things with your time that bring you joy and happiness.
12) Sleep regularly, and try to make a point of organizing your schedule so that you get enough that you feel rested in the morning.
For the majority of people, these things alone will optimize your quality healthspan within whatever your genes will naturally allow. Some people get unlucky despite doing everything right. Some people seem to defy these principles successfully (although most such people were dealt lucky genetic hands and would probably be even better off if they followed them).
The problem is that the above advice doesn't make anybody money. Selling peptides and supplements makes money. Scaring people into following some guru or influencer does too. Selling memberships or training services can. Expensive gizmos to track and optimize a bunch of parameters can be highly profitable. I'm often amazed by people who you'd think should have some degree of scientific literacy get suckered in by weakly powered "studies" promoting some lifestyle hack as the bees' knees for longevity and wellness.
And yes, people who turn this into an obsession end up causing themselves way more stress than they need to for years, often waste lots of money, and not infrequently end up ingesting things that are poorly studied and perhaps even dangerous. Or even taking something healthy, like say turmeric, and way overdoing it to the point of toxicity.
Just moving every day is so important. My Taiwanese-American inlaws are far from health nuts, but they both made a practice decades ago of running, walking, swimming or getting some sort of movement in, every day. They still do.
And now that they're 92 and 88, you can really see the benefit: they live on their own, my mother-in law still drives, and they're mentally sharp. But I will give my wife credit for giving them a bunch of grandchildren (and now there's great-grandchildren, too) who have also helped to keep them young.
Re: the Enhanced Self incorporates the belief that the human body is akin to a single-issue hardware device, whose owner should obsessively seek to extend its operating life beyond its scheduled date of obsolescence through relentless work and eagle-eyed neuroticism.
Its life? Maybe not. But its effective operating years-- yes. At 59 I am less obsessed with how long I'll live than with how long I can remain in good health. Toward that end I eat sensibly (I try to!) and I do get exercise, notably by biking anywhere and everywhere it's practical to do so. But yes, I go to a gym to work on upper body strength too. However I also seek to remain socially connected with people for mental health sake, notably through my church but through other venues too. What on Earth is wrong with this? Currently I am partially laid up with a strained or torn knee ligament, after a wonderful two week vacation, and it's driving me crazy-- no biking, dancing etc. God willing I am determined to get to church Sunday. If some peptide could reduce the inflammation and promote quicker healing I would be taking it. And what would be wrong with that either?
Yes, that's me! And right now I cannot do either. I've strained or maybe torn a knee tendon (doing something quite simple, not exercise related). So I can't do much except limp around the house and stores and tomorrow, I am determined, church.
re: Decline of Intellectuals
If we can compare the intellectual environment of the 2000s to the post-2008 period, there used to be a much more vigorous sphere of public debate. This shifted over to the COVID style (avant la lettre) of argument by assertion and by factional association. If you did not "believe" in global warming, you were a bad person or just irresponsible even if your objection was based on criticisms of data collection or analysis methodology or what-have-you. Over time this greatly diminished the prestige of intellectuals because idiots can just assert things; you do not need sophisticates to do it. Now they have developed computer systems that can convincingly assert arguments without evidence, so the shoddy intellectuals are no longer needed.
What keeps coming to mind for me is the similar degeneration of the online gaming medium, which is an internet medium just like the new public discourse. The assumption of the online game is that players by skill and dedication will become excellent, and thus win competitions and gain prestige among players. This assumption was subverted by software and hardware cheating, automation by software, and the corruption of real money used to buy game assets. This also struck sports; it's not about the players and their coaches but the players, coaches, their doctors, and their pharmacologists.
With the discourse, if you want to obtain a political outcome, would you be better off donating a big jet to the president, or paying for discourse? Obviously, you will get much farther with just paying people off. Maintaining republican discourse requires the maintenance of certain non-commercial ideals of sportsmanship by force. The old critique of commercial republics is that you can just bribe their leaders to defeat it in detail.
About the Noah Smith reflection - not sure if this was already cited (by Smith or Renn), but the noted self-help author Tim Ferriss has candidly posted that AI is basically eating up that niche.
https://tim.blog/2026/06/12/has-ai-already-killed-nonfiction/
"If the run-rate holds, my catalog will sell roughly 80% fewer print copies in 2026 than it did in 2022, with almost all of that happening since LLMs like Claude and ChatGPT exploded in use."
There is a lot of writing that will go the way of the buggy whip. My very conservative predictions are that
1. as always, the top 10-20%, with plenty of cultural, social, emotional, and intellectual capital, will find a way to make the new regime work for them - let's see if they can make it work for the bottom 80-90%
2. writing, or creative activity of any kind, will only survive to the extent that an audience feels a human, personal connection to the creator and says: "I personally like this person/people, and I want him/her/them to succeed. I endorse their project as consonant with my values. I am voting for them with my dollars." Hard to see how anyone pays anything for culture otherwise.
Thanks for sharing the Traditio video. I wish Protestants could make beautiful art like this!
What you mean as factionalism is white men actually looking out for their own interests for a change. As long as you promote race and sex quotas, disparate impact cudgels and import more hostile groups you are going to have that kind of "factionalism" I would think.
For the simple reason that for all the rhetoric about high ideals everyone wants to live where the whites live. And send their kids to the whitest schools. With whites becoming a minority, property values will move further apart. As in ultra-liberal DC where similar property in Upper Caucasia NW quadrant is 3 to 9 times more expensive than vibrant SE quadrant.
And the national debt will accelerate this process, especially when the dollar loses its reserve currency status.
From a physical health standpoint, the advice that gets you most of the way there is remarkably simple:
1) Eat a variety of foods, not too much. Mostly (but not entirely) from plant origins. Too much is actually pretty easy to tell: are you over fat? Then eat somewhat less every day until you're not. Unless you're a dedicated weight lifter or extremely tall or short, BMI actually works pretty well for risk stratification here.
2) drink plenty of water.
3) don't drink alcohol, smoke, or do other recreational drugs.
4) some physical activity every day. include both cardio and resistance training; do varieties of each that you enjoy and can stick to. Make a point of slowly progressing over time in intensity, but no need to go crazy with that.
5) Spend time, real quality time, with friends, family, loved ones. stay emotionally and socially connected.
6) Don't stress yourself out too much with job, or other obsessions (such as health fanaticism).
7) Get check ups regularly, and if real medical conditions are identified, follow your health practitioner's advice, take your medications consistently, etc.
8) Do some stretching every day to maintain your mobility and flexibility. Especially hips and legs
9) Avoid obviously dangerous stuff like driving without a seatbelt on, hanging out around people with a penchant for violence, etc.
10) Wear sunscreen daily, brush your teeth, use dental floss daily.
11) Actively make a point of doing things with your time that bring you joy and happiness.
12) Sleep regularly, and try to make a point of organizing your schedule so that you get enough that you feel rested in the morning.
For the majority of people, these things alone will optimize your quality healthspan within whatever your genes will naturally allow. Some people get unlucky despite doing everything right. Some people seem to defy these principles successfully (although most such people were dealt lucky genetic hands and would probably be even better off if they followed them).
The problem is that the above advice doesn't make anybody money. Selling peptides and supplements makes money. Scaring people into following some guru or influencer does too. Selling memberships or training services can. Expensive gizmos to track and optimize a bunch of parameters can be highly profitable. I'm often amazed by people who you'd think should have some degree of scientific literacy get suckered in by weakly powered "studies" promoting some lifestyle hack as the bees' knees for longevity and wellness.
And yes, people who turn this into an obsession end up causing themselves way more stress than they need to for years, often waste lots of money, and not infrequently end up ingesting things that are poorly studied and perhaps even dangerous. Or even taking something healthy, like say turmeric, and way overdoing it to the point of toxicity.
Just moving every day is so important. My Taiwanese-American inlaws are far from health nuts, but they both made a practice decades ago of running, walking, swimming or getting some sort of movement in, every day. They still do.
And now that they're 92 and 88, you can really see the benefit: they live on their own, my mother-in law still drives, and they're mentally sharp. But I will give my wife credit for giving them a bunch of grandchildren (and now there's great-grandchildren, too) who have also helped to keep them young.
Yep, exactly. Those habits add up in a big way over a lifetime. And I'm so happy to hear that they're doing well like that!
Re: the Enhanced Self incorporates the belief that the human body is akin to a single-issue hardware device, whose owner should obsessively seek to extend its operating life beyond its scheduled date of obsolescence through relentless work and eagle-eyed neuroticism.
Its life? Maybe not. But its effective operating years-- yes. At 59 I am less obsessed with how long I'll live than with how long I can remain in good health. Toward that end I eat sensibly (I try to!) and I do get exercise, notably by biking anywhere and everywhere it's practical to do so. But yes, I go to a gym to work on upper body strength too. However I also seek to remain socially connected with people for mental health sake, notably through my church but through other venues too. What on Earth is wrong with this? Currently I am partially laid up with a strained or torn knee ligament, after a wonderful two week vacation, and it's driving me crazy-- no biking, dancing etc. God willing I am determined to get to church Sunday. If some peptide could reduce the inflammation and promote quicker healing I would be taking it. And what would be wrong with that either?
Nothing. But as with everything else, pursue fitness in moderation, don't make it your whole personality--and it sounds like you're doing the former.
Yes, that's me! And right now I cannot do either. I've strained or maybe torn a knee tendon (doing something quite simple, not exercise related). So I can't do much except limp around the house and stores and tomorrow, I am determined, church.