Links to Consider, 10/31/2024

Lorenzo Warby on the epistemic crisis; Freya India on alternate reality; Quico Toro and Guido Nunez-Mujica on solar power; Alice Evans on surveys of men

Lorenzo Warby writes,

What is needed is a root-and-branch purging of the universities. This means massive closures of worse-than-useless Faculties and Departments, breaking-up of universities and the regulation that universities should have been able to do for themselves, but demonstrably—and catastrophically—have failed to do. It also means stripping away requiring university qualifications for any job, apart from a very narrow range of professional qualifications and, even there, the revival of alternative means of qualifying.

You don’t have to like that paragraph. What I found most interesting in the essay was a chart showing that in Islamic societies scientific authorship was inversely related to madrassa authorship. The source is a paper by Eric Chaney. An excerpt from the conclusion of his paper:

Starting in the eleventh century, scientific activity began to decline in the Islamic world. The data patterns do not support the essentialist idea that Islam and science are incompatible. Rather, the results suggest that the political empowerment of religious leaders negatively impacted scientific development. Newly empowered elites restricted intellectual production and discouraged interpretations of Islam that undermined their authority. These actions decreased the incentives to engage in scientific activity and helped drive the decline.

Warby’s rant reflects a worry that our universities will otherwise behave like madrassas.

Freya India writes,

by far the most depressing invention I’ve seen lately is a new app called SocialAI, a “private social network where you receive millions of AI-generated comments offering feedback, advice & reflections on each post you make.” In other words, your own imaginary ‘X’, with infinite “simulated fictional characters”. You, alone, in a vast social network of AI bots.

I’ll bet none of you ever read, or even heard of, The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. I was a big Strat-o-Matic addict when the novel came out, but I never read it.

Quico Toro and Guido Nunez-Mujica write,

For solar to serve as the backbone of a grid, it needs to be backed with storage. That can come in the form of batteries, hydrogen, or pumped hydro. All of these are expensive; none of them scale. Storing a kilowatt-hour of electricity in a chemical battery costs an order of magnitude more than just generating it in a nuclear power plant. Which is why a 100% solar grid would be insanely expensive, even though generating solar power is basically free. 

Alice Evans writes,

Over half of men say dating has become more difficult, a core issue repeatedly stressed in my interviews with young American men.

Other studies of men ‘falling behind’ tend to omit this, but my qualitative research suggests it is psychologically central. A rising share of men are now unpartnered, feeling unwanted and lonely.

Her post includes many interesting survey findings, mostly from a Pew study.

She concludes,

The American public expresses strong support for gender equality - both in terms of female leadership, marital names, and engaged fathers.

However, we see two frictions:

• A substantial minority of men identify as ‘masculine’, and feel their identity is demonised.

• Dating is increasingly generating frustrations.

The men who identify as masculine and feel that masculinity is demonized are disproportionately Republican and/or Black or Hispanic.

substacks referenced above: @

Testosterone on Trial: How Does America Really Feel About Masculinity??

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The Problem With Solar

We Live In Imaginary Worlds

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The systematic attack on sense-making