On manifest truth, bell-shaped discount rates, and the Elf lady

2021, Week 2 Musings

Two books in progress, Conjectures and Refutations and The Ministry for the Future: I’m participating in a philosophy reading group hosted by the guys behind the Increments podcast, and we’re going chapter by chapter through one of Popper’s books. So far, Popper hasn’t fundamentally reshaped my personal philosophy the way that, say, Peter Singer and Derek Parfit have, but I am very much on board with his core points so far, like the idea that truth is manifest, expressed elegantly in the following line:

“Our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.”

I’ll have more to say about Popper as I proceed through the book, especially if/when there’s something that challenges my worldview. Meanwhile, I started Kim Stanley Robinson’s latest near-future climate sci-fi, which I believe I sought out based on a shoutout by Ezra Klein’s podcast. I’m only about a third of the way through, but so far, I would say this is probably worth the time of anybody who spends any amount of time working on climate science or policy, since it paints a pretty comprehensive vision of what can go wrong, with a lean towards geopolitical imagination. That being said, I am finding this read incredibly frustrating because of the gimmicks employed, which may or may not be Robinson staples, of dropping nonfiction-y, didactic digressions every few chapters on climate science, economics, etc. First off, these read like…