2021-06-22

Articles

  • This article on Patrick Collison, Tyler Cowen and Patrick Jay’s reflections on the Fast Grants program they started to fund COVID related research during the pandemic. This quote stands out:

    Scientists are in the paradoxical position of being deemed the very best people to fund in order to make important discoveries but not so trustworthy that they should be able to decide what work would actually make the most sense!

    I really like the idea of experimenting more with existing institutional processes and frameworks and think we could benefit from a little more dynamism.

  • Women at work in the United States Since 1860. Suggests that when you account for informal labor that nonetheless contributes to marketable goods, female labor force participation hasn’t really changed much since 1869. If so, “women’s participation in the labor market [hasn’t] truly changed so drastically since the mid-nineteenth century [… it has] simply become more visible?”

  • I also recently found Justin E. H. Smith’s substack after doing some more googling after Rene Girard. His post on the latter topic is a refreshing counterpoint to Alex Danco’s introduction that’s linked to in last week’s links. His main thrust is that Girard’s mimetic desire is just the idea that “we copy eachother”, a view better expressed by “Roland Barthes’s analysis of haute-couture in his ingenious 1967 System of Fashion, or for that matter Thorstein Veblen on conspicuous consumption, or indeed any number of other authors who have noticed that indubitable truth of human existence”. I have also been left feeling like there’s not a lot of there there in what I have read and listened to on Girard. To be fair, the argument that something is obvious is not exactly compelling post hoc. I do have what I think is a more substantial objection to the idea that all of this wanting to be like everyone else inevitably leads to a downward spiral of competition that ends only when one of the competing parties is scarificed to the communal gods (becomes the scapegoat in Girard’s lingo). There are many examples of prosocial behavior that is likely driven by imitation but doesn’t require a mimetic sacrifice. Anyway, I have subscribed to Smith’s substack since, in spite of his wordiness and sometimes sounding like a Latin dictionary, he’s not afraid of being contrarian. Maybe I have a thing for smart shit talkers.

Books

  • A Mind at Play: Still at it on this one. So far the best chapters have been the ones about switching and information theory. The life stories are interesting, but I think I’ve heard enough peripherally about the man to get much from the light treatment of his “tinkering” of later years. I may put it down to read the actual information theory paper.

Podcasts

  • Heavyweight is back! They’re leading up to the new season with some shorts, the first of which was released this week. It is such a lovely story guaranteed to leave nary a dry eye in the room. If you don’t know heavyweight, you should.
  • This Fuse podcast. I had never heard of it, but when I saw Open Mike Eagle and David Byrne were talking to each other, I had to listen. It was good, but I wish they’d had about five hours longer to go deep.

Music

  • Phosphorescent just put out a new EP. I liked C’est la Vie and Here’s to Taking it Easy was my life’s soundtrack when it first came out, but his big album, Muchacho never quite clicked for me. The biggest song from that album was Song for Zula which is on the new EP in a pared down version that really focuses the attention on the lyrics.

    My heart is wild / my bones are steam / and I could kill you with my bare hands if I was free

    I mean, come on. It’s about love and freedom, and it’s devastatingly beautiful.