Meta-disclaimer: don’t trust disclaimers by advertisers
“I am promoting this because it helps make the world a better place!” he says
Disclaimer: this is an ad
I am promoting this book. I wrote this thread because I want people to read it. I was not paid to promote it, nor did I coordinate this with the author or publisher.
But I am benefiting via the promotion of this book. This book describes how to do rigorous memetics. If more people understand this, my work becomes more valuable, because more people will understand what I’m trying to do. So, it’s an ad in the same way that
Human physics https://whoarewenow.net/chapter-16/#tataouineatnight
https://x.com/DefenderOfBasic/status/1818811919714709839
reading “Who Are We Now” has been so meaningful for me. I think reading it has taught me how to decipher the world, watching Blaise ask big questions about society and work through (1) how we can go about answering it (2) why we should/shouldn’t trust the answers we find
i think this is the most meaningful piece to me. it’s the “here’s what we know. but also, let me tell you HOW we know this, so you can decide for yourself.” he doesn’t talk down to the reader. he lifts up the reader. why is this so rare
Learned about it from Steve Levitt’s podcast: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/are-our-tools-becoming-part-of-us/