If a statement is true by definition, then it poses the question of what counts as a formal definition, and what makes such correct. This is not so clear cut. The convention is to use the standard rules of deduction given by propositional and first-order logic, whilst performing that arithmetic with the Boolean values to test whether the final statement is tautological. Remember your introductory logic class at college/university? However, the law of the excluded middle and double negation remain contested rules, and alternative logic systems such as intuitionist or Gödel logic have arisen as answers to such debates. Therefore the validity of a definition rests in part on our subjective assumptions on which set of deductions are valid.

Quine's solution is that knowledge and truth operate on an underlying web of connected beliefs over truth values and definitions. If our beliefs are revised, then the analytic statement no longer remains analytic. For instance, suppose that we suddenly change the law and redefine the very concept of a bachelor. Or we use an entirely different group (e.g. modular arithmetic) for our daily calculations. Then “all bachelors are unmarried” or “2+2=4” no longer become analytic. The former depends on our definitoon of bachelor. The latter becomes (2+2)mod1 = 4mod1 = 0, if we want our formal system to always return an empty value for any inputs, and use mod 1 arithmetic to achieve this. So in principle there are no a priori formal restrictions on what counts as truth. Truth is endogenous to our use of language.

A more grounded example is that if an object is uniformly red, this is incompatible with it being uniformly black. However black-and-white photography uproots this entire statement. Perception of colour depends on our mental states, which introduces some degree of subjectivity. The sorts of questions raised via discussions of qualia and our consciousness (for instance, is my red your black?) also undermine the notion that this is an analytic statement.

All of this sounds rather postmodernist. Yet neither is Quine nor I rejecting the very existence of objective truth. It does not follow that, because we lack a fixed and uncontested formal system and set of definitions to define truth ex-ante, objective truth per se does not exist. Our belief systems do not just arbitrarily arise out of thin air, yet are connected deeply to the reality under which the world operates and we live in. This must be the case for our beliefs and languages to yield any sort of utility. We define a concept of a bachelor as our legal and social institutions rely on such a distinction being made. We use base 10 as opposed to modular arithmetic, as we obviously need to count physical objects as they exist around us. Perception introduces a wedge between the mind and objective reality, yet survival relies on either a highly accurate approximation of reality or the ability to accurately perceive most of reality. If my green is your blue, then as long as us two independent observers agree that it is the same colour, then this is the best we can expect when definiting what counts as objective reality? If subjective perception does not generate meaningful variation in observations, then we have just introduced meaningless circularity that for practical purposes do not add to any understanding of our world, so can be erased.

In general, Tarski sought to overcome this very epistemic relativism. Truth is to be defined via correspondance with a formal system and a meta-system that holds the Boolean values consistent with empirical reality. The beauty in this correspondence is that the very concept of an analytic definition is preserved. We also eliminate any concerns over our use of the excluded middle and so on. If our tautologies and our truth values given by classic logic correspond with our meta-language as given by our beliefs and those truth values, then the distinction very much holds. In this sense, I subscribe to Hilary Putnam's solution to the dilemma.

Likewise, as Donald Davidson advocates, if truth is conditional on our semantic meanings, then we only need to know such semantic meanings to determine whether a statement is analytic. For instance, I only need know what the term “bachelor” means, in tandem with some fluency in English, to know that “all bachelors are unmarried”. In a sense, a semantic interpretation of meaning is sufficient for our meta-language.

What determines semantic meaning? The utility of our words as they correspond to the reality in which we operate in. Postmodernists are correct that meaning is ascribed by ourselves and our societal institutions, as opposed to just arising, yet such meaning yields a vital connection to reality. Even if truth is dependent on meaning, this should not be stretched to imply that objective truth does not exist.

I'm currently reading the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. What strikes me about the former is the extent to which even the protagonists engage in Machiavellian and seemingly amoral conduct. I view this as a tale in the pitfalls of strict deontological rules. In this sense, dharma pioneered (without explicitly defining or formalising the concept) utilitarian and consequentialist ethics. Unlike most other faiths, the inherent tradeoffs plaguing any moral decision are emphasised ex-ante. An alternative interpretation is that the main lesson is the inevitability of evil and suffering in life despite the best intentions of most, which grounds the tale firmly as a class in human nature.

If the Mahabharata, via myth and literary masterpiece, outlined our core moral theory, the Ramayana introduced the ingredient of virtue - the necessity of acting based on our morals even in the face of adversity. Hindus recognise the main flaw in utilitarianism: a vague consequentialist framework can easily be manipulated for self-serving, as opposed to ethical, purposes. It's very easy to argue that one's selfish decisions are motivated for the good of the overall community, if preferences are unknown to the individual.

Yet this introduces the question: how do we know if we're truly acting virtuously with courageous endeavour, rather than falsely believing such or rationalising ulterior malicious motives? If dharma is context-dependent and consequences unknown, haven't we just reintroduced the very moral relativism we sought to avoid? Surely we return to the very rigid deontological constraints that the Mahabharata subtly warned us about?

This is where the roles of myth, storytelling, and faith enter our human universals. Whilst lacking in epistemological or logical rigour, these heuristics provide a parsimonous framework on how to act: in our daily lives, for life's inevitable tragedies, and our most difficult decisions where we may otherwise be paralysed by our conscience. The lack of logical consistency, if we accept from Gödel the inherent tradeoff between consistency and parsimony, tends to avoid the costs of following deontological instructions to the expense of our welfare. Yet a broad set of heuristics, that can be broken in special cases (highlighted in the canon and the evolution of its interpretations through time), focuses on optimising utility on average as opposed to each and every case. Often the focus on imitating role models - the main prophets of the Abrahamic faiths, Aurelius for the stoics, and the übermensch of Nietzscheans - adds emotional relevance through empathising with our plights and inspiring us to be our best selves. By placing ourselves within their shoes and asking “what would they do?”, with the famous myths corresponding to a particular dilemma salient in our minds, the ethical decision becomes apparent. For dharma, we introduce Rama for this very purpose.

An underrated reason for the existence of role models that now occured to me, just as I write this sentence right now, is that they provide the motivation to act more altruistically and self-sacrificing on the margin. Effective altruists and the underlying philosophical inspiration from Singer's drowning child advocates for effectively ceding our utility functions to an empirical calculation of our spending and lifestyles to maximise our philanthropic impact regardless of our own desires. Yet this is obviously blank-slateist. Nonetheless, more self-sacrifice on the margin clearly can be Pareto efficient: this thesis is implicit from prisoner's dilemma games and the free-rider. Economics emphasises the role of institutions and mechanism design to induce less free-riding. Our moral guidance from the legendary classics and our heroes is another means, grounded in our primate emotions, that for the entirety of civilisation we achieve this.

One could also consider the Mahabharata as a positive theory of morality, and the Ramayana as a normative case for living a life of virtue. Utilitarianism emphases the former, and our intuitions grounded in human universals and our religious beliefs the latter. The former outlines the case, the latter grants it legitimacy via soliciting emotional acceptance. Ultimately, both actually can be considered as complementary, as opposed to competing ethical perspectives. If we accept this line of reasoning, then does modern philosophical discourse exaggerate the disagreements?

Does the objectivity of morality imply virtue ethics?

If this complementarity holds, then this lends credence to the notion of morality as objective. From a metaphysical idealist perspective, objective reality (the set of objects that can, in principle, be sensed by more than one independent observers) can consist of abstract as well as physical objects. Hence moral disagreements are concerned not with whether there exists a moral course of action, but rather what that action is. Rather than our debates revolving around the core ontology, they instead exist given the imperfect information that each moral actor holds, which thereby often prevents certainty in knowing what the moral decision is.

I think this objectivity and complementarity is demonstrated by the fact that almost all faiths, at all times and places they arose independently even when lacking contact with outside cultures, emphasise some concept of self-sacrifice or self-restraint for the moral good. Almost all have reproduced (Aristotelian) virtue ethics from first principles. What religion or moral ideal promotes the idea of being selfish and indulging oneself, even to the expense of your duties, self-maintenance, and your community? Although objectivists place little weight on the values of altruism, the intertemporal aspect of virtue is rewarded a central role. Restraint, delayed gratification, and the importance of duty, are all vital principles that objectivists live by. Even the Cyrenaics and the Epicureans valued some degree of virtue and altruistic behaviour, paradoxically as a means towards achieving individual hedonistic pleasure. Note that all of this is consistent with adopting a utilitarian and consequentialist approach to evaluating ethical tradeoffs, and that such does not imply relativism. In fact, many of the most famous utilitarian philosophers, such as Peter Singer, argue that utilitarianism implies the opposite, that morality is objective.

A reasonable conclusion to draw is that virtue ethics, the set of lifestyle philosophies emphasising low discounting and altruism, can be considered a human universal. I have at times throughout the past advocated vociferously against attempts to reduce (via social stigma) the relative status of hedonism, and still consider this paternalistic sentiment to render most individuals worse off overall. The particular avocations of vice we stigmatise, and the magnitude of this social penalty, is not exactly correlated with the social harms such indulgence yields anyhow. At the margin, we could clearly do with less judging, and more of “live and let live” approach to the habits of others. However, concerning the total effect, the optimal level of belief in virtue ethics is probably nonzero. If such a philosophy has been replicated independently across distinct times and places throughout human history, and remained prevalent since, then a Burkean view on institutions considers such as facilitating our social and cultural wellbeing, and therefore is culturally and biologically adaptive.

However, an alternative interpretation is that these philosophies instead aim to spin the ubiquity of suffering in a positive light. Tragedy is instead framed as heroic glory, and a courageous pursuit of a higher virtue. By raising the relative status of suffering, not only are individuals more likely to sacrifice themselves for the good of their polity (necessary when war was so commonplace to in effect be our default state), but the cardinal costs such suffering imposes are alleviated. To an extent, the Stoics and Buddhists are right that some proportion of our pain is influenced by our emotional perception of it. Whilst such appeals to virtue may have dulled the pain of the Malthusian poverty characterising most of human existence, in an era of unprecedented abundance, should we not rethink the valorisation of tragedy?

Even I find the concept of virtue ethics intuitively appealing on aesthetics, yet this line of reasoning amounts to little more than “the vibes align with my emotional priors”. If virtue is indeed always in our self-interest, then why do lofty appeals to such prevail over binding contracts? Why do even self-enforced commitments to lifestyle changes tend to fail? When the incentives of committing to an ethical heuristic tend to fail, then should we update our normative views on its merits? The answer is that, as is the central lesson of game theory, that what is biologically and culturally adaptive hence socially optimal is not always consistent with individual optimisation. Therefore we design a set of social norms to coordinate this shift to the greater good. This is how human universals accelerate cultural and natural selection.

“Old, digitized astronomical images taken before the human spacefaring age offer a rare glimpse of the sky before the era of artificial satellites. In this paper, we present the first optical searches for artificial objects with high specular reflections near the Earth. We follow the method proposed in Villarroel et al. (2022) and use a transient sample drawn from Solano et al. (2022). We use images from the First Palomar Sky Survey to search for multiple (within a plate exposure) transients that, in addition to being point-like, are aligned along a narrow band. We provide a shortlist of the most promising candidate alignments, including one with 3.9 sigma statistical significance. These aligned transients remain difficult to explain with known phenomena, even if rare optical ghosting producing point-like sources cannot be fully excluded at present. We explore remaining possibilities, including fast reflections from highly reflective objects in geosynchronous orbit, or emissions from artificial sources high above Earth's atmosphere. We also find a highly significant (∼22σ) deficit of POSS-I transients within Earth's shadow when compared with the theoretical hemispheric shadow coverage at 42,164 km altitude. This deficit is still present though at reduced significance (~7.6 sigma) when a more realistic plate-based coverage is considered. This study should be viewed as an initial exploration into the potential of archival photographic surveys to reveal transient phenomena, and we hope it motivates more systematic searches across historical datasets.”

In particular, the novelty in these findings is in the methodology used to test for possible UFOs. Rather than simply count all pre-Sputnik transients (vulnerable to measurement errors and interference, or random noise in the atmosphere1), they exploited the geosynchronous orbit and isolated the effects of Earth's shadow. For any given orbit, we can calculate whether the Earth blocks sunlight at a particular point. If transients arise from glints, we should see far more transients in regions exposed to sunlight relative to within the shadow.

This is indeed the case, using the rate at which we'd expect transients in the same spot in the absence of shadow. As Robin Hanson noted, the discrepancy between this rate and actual observations (around 2/3) is roughly the same for two orbits at different radiuses, so our findings are consistent with the constraints from math. This discrepancy, from our calculations, also gives the expected number of transients that are glints.

Moreover, Hanson calculates (adjusting for advances in telescopes) that these are likely to be flat objects:

“At GEO it would take an ideal ~22-35 cm diameter circle (perfectly flat, aligned, and reflective) to create a magnitude 15-16 image in these photos from a 0.04 sec glint. (Or so says ChatGPT5.) For magnitude 17-19, that changes to an ideal 6-14 cm circle. Objects less than perfectly flat, aligned, or reflective, or with shorter duration glints, would have to be larger. Objects close to Earth could have smaller areas due to that, but would also have to be larger due to closer objects orbiting faster.

Thus while today Earth sees ~1800 glints per hour off of the roughly ~1-2cm equivalent diameter ideal circle sized human satellites and debris, in the decade before Sputnik, the space around Earth generated ~340 glints per hour mostly from brief (<0.04s) glints of sunlight off of at least roughly 6-14cm equivalent ideal circles. While this makes the older glint distribution seem different from today’s, note that the older telescope couldn’t see the fainter glints that today’s telescopes can see. So the two distributions might actually be the same.”

Therefore we can plausibly rule out random atmospheric or measurement disturbances, at least at the distances involved. Whilst the possibility of these transients being cosmic ray flashes is very much alive, the correlation with nuclear tests is consistent with alien civilisations subtly2 warning us about the existential risks involved for us and possibly extraterrestrial civilisation. On a more general note, it's useful to discipline our thinking by considering the incentives alien civilisations have to communicate with us in only a discreet manner - interpreted by (possibly) only top militaries. It seems odd that aliens wouldn't want to make themselves known right? Hanson3 arrives at similar conclusions to mine, with an added emphasis on our likelihood of casting them in the out-group should they attempt peaceful communication4.

Ergo if you accept these findings (it's worth noting that some have failed to replicate Villarroel's results, so admittedly the findings are noisy5), the very high likelihood of these transients being glints pre-Sputnik should update your priors. What are the odds that these glint observations are timed coincidentially with reports or nuclear tests6?

In any case, a reasonable base rate for our priors regarding the number of alien civilisations communication is possible with, is of course constrained by the Drake equation. Given the billions of stars and planets in the Milky Way, even tiny increases in the probability of extraterrestrial life (which nascent discoveries of biosignatures have confirmed7) massively increases this number. Assuming heterogeneity in technological development, surely at least some yield the ability to communicate across multiple light-years? So why should our priors be that the number of suspected reportings are in fact alien UFOs are zero? In my view, the burden of proof rests on those that discount this possibility.

Within occultism, there are a plethora of broad traditions. Hermeticism emphasises our divine transformation via gnosis (esoteric knowledge) as a path to revealing the hidden mechanisms of the cosmos. Kabbalah attempts to formalise esoteric theory and the interpretations of symbolic representations. The relationship with the neopagan faiths runs deep. Of course, occultism is defined just as much via practice and implementation as theory. Ceremonial magic explicitly seeks contact and alignment with supernatural forces via an elaborate set of rituals designed to achieve spiritual transformation. Thelema argues that we each have a hidden “true” purpose for our existence, and this defines the meaning of life - Thelemites tailor magic towards uncovering this individual meaning. Chaos magic is less dogmatic, and will borrow more heavily from established science.

Like rationalists (of the Déscartes rather than the LessWrong tradition!), the idea that reality is only what we can sense is rejected. Where they differ is obviously via the manner in which they seek this knowledge. The former emphasises formal logical deduction and proof from axioms; the latter vague symbols and superstition, unfalsifiable rituals, and the “supernatural” as a residual for our ignorance. There are no prizes for guessing which epistemological framework I'm more sympathetic to! Despite this, an advantage of esotericism over rationalism is that it seems more aligned with those seeking a life meaning: guidance, often in the form of personalised ceremonial activities, on how to live. Moreover, modern science essentially relied upon occultist practices in its heyday. Chemistry would not exist without alchemy. Kepler was infamous for practicing astrology. Arguably, a focus on decoding hidden processes broke us out of the Dark Ages into the Enlightenment, by shackling us away from a dependence on God as the default explanation for everything. Modern science, via wildly different methods, also seeks to decipher hidden phenomena, if we consider “hidden” as synonymous with “unknown” in this context.

We can test the robustness of astrology as a theory of the universe via tracking the accuracy of its predictions. Once we account for sampling error, astrological predictions seem to perform no better than random chance (although an astrologer would argue that randomness is determined by some esoteric mechanism). Hence this entire epistemological framework is not only unfalsifiable, but cannot be justified via a Bayesian standpoint either. So what explains its continued popularity?

I'd argue that the widespread demand for this pseudoscience is grounded in the desire to seek a secular replacement for the meanings and practices that religious institutions provide. Science has not displaced religion, as science cannot answer how we should live life. Religion provides a ready-made template for practical ethics that can be applied throughout our daily lives, with celestial enforcement and a philosophy of meaning to incentivise the prosocial. A core cognitive bias is that we seek and accept nonrandom explanations for random phenomena or coincidences, which is why we're often susceptible to astrological predictions proving correct or supposed miracles and answered prayers. To a large extent, wishful thinking - the desire to place a positive spin on life's ubiquitous tragedies, suffering, and evils - also prevails1. Then of course art and beauty is commonly motivated via the pursuit of a higher power - our cultural lives would be drastically inferior with the absence of religion.

Religion is increasingly being falsified, with claim after claim regarding metaphysics in the Bible being falsified, and hasty Straussian reinterpretations ex-post to maintain legitimacy via consistency with science. Nonetheless, it clearly serves a purpose in the advancement of our prosperity and a fulfilling life, so these superstitious institutions will never vanish. Faith, myth, and ritual, with the derived practices, are classic human universals.

Therefore, occultism is rising as a viable substitute. Indeed, practitioners of the occult seem to have learnt from the mistakes of established religions. Don't offer certain testable hypotheses that could be refuted in the future, but instead offer vague statements that can easily be interpreted to fit the facts. This is essentially the entire premise of astrology, which is why even devout atheists have an easier time accepting this philosophy. Moreover, occult practices also place an important emphasis on individual agency, so is compatible with the increasing demand for virtue ethics as exemplified via the nascent resurgence in stoicism. Plus unless you're in a literal cult, the demands for commitment and adherence are also a lot less rigid than established religions. You can essentially drop in and out, and take whatever belief you want, as you please. You cannot do this with religion.

Our priors from endogenous growth theory still appear to be supported by the causal literature. I would of course qualify with a distinction between density and proximity: more apartments in a taller block won't do much to impact innovation (if you've ever lived in one of these and a suburb, everyone knows you're far more likely to interact with neighbours in the latter than former!), yet being sufficiently close for regular face-to-face, and spontaneous interaction, appears to do so.

However, this raises an obvious tradeoff. Cape Town holds some of the most stunning natural scenery close to a major urban hub that one is likely to find. Natural beauty is nonrival, just as the positive spillovers of innovation are. Can this justify NIMBYism, and offset the welfare losses imposed via maintaining a semi public good?

To avoid plaigiarising ChatGPT's work, I implore you to read the entire chat, yet in most cases it's clear that NIMBYism exerts a negative cost to welfare. There's even a structural model to interpret the empirical literature and estimates (I would exercise the usual caution that one should with LLM generated work). However, in a few select cases, it's optimal to protect the natural environment in question from development [1].

How one calibrates policy, political incentives, and urban planning to incorporate this is a subject for another day: the overrarching thesis that Abundance cannot neglect that there are legitimate [2] cases when local communities might decide to block a development. My first-best solution would be for wealthy philanthropists to protect the undeveloped bucolic habitat via purchasing the land. As we don't have a free-market in land ownership, we must settle for a second-best mechanism design of permitting rules, which inevitably involves some deliberative and collective involvement of third-parties. If YIMBYs are to maximise their popularity, they should find an incentive-compatible solution to streamline when a development can be blocked to protect an overwhelmingly popular public space or not. Yes, small yet vocal activist and bureaucratic interests should not take advantage of the decentralised and litigious nature of planning applications, yet their voice shouldn't be discarded altogether.

Moreover, the existence of land-use restrictions also changes the calculus on open borders [3]. The most convincing argument in favour of some immigration restrictions stems from Garrett Jones: mean national IQ matters for economic prosperity via institutional quality, immigrants maintain most of their culture and traits [4], so open borders will result in a decline in institutional quality via importing a high number of third-world migrants; exerting a negative effect on governance. British councils adopting what are, in effect, blasphemy laws, are testament to this hypothesis. Rising rates of urban knife crime in Britain - unusual in a context of otherwise declining crime of all types, is primarily a feature of black inner-city gangs, and can be partly explained via a rise in the black population. Previously, I would have critqued this highly compelling critique of open borders with the unduly wise skepticism that any alternative amounts to governments engaging in social engineering regarding demographics and labour markets, which is obviously suboptimal given the track record of central planning in any other circumstance. Most immigrants and their descendents don't commit crime, so just increase policing resources and sentences in line with any shift in immigration trends, if this is your concern. As the Gulf states show, one can maintain the overall quantity and quality of your innovation with an elite right-tail. Additionally though, there is another flaw in Jones’ argument, grounded explicitly in land-use policy.

Here in Britain, it's common knowledge that minorities in major metropolitan centres perform much better on social mobility, as measured via all the usual means (for instance, going to university conditional on your parents not going, income and employment conditional on parental income, etc), than working-class whites in the North. Presumably, both groups start with a similar genetic endowment regarding IQ. In my view, this is convincing evidence that proximity to hubs of dynamism and progress facilitates mobility. This also substantially mitigates the concerns of immigration restriction advocates, as integration of the second and third generations is a lot more feasible than they think. Despite the noticeable nascent trend towards the hereditarian position on genetic inheritance of traits, environment still indeed plays a large role. Heritability of IQ is likely to be between 50%-60%, in line with most estimates for other traits: slightly below the twin studies estimates yet well above the molecular ones, which aligns neatly with my perspective on their respective biases. Hence, there is a large scope for both environment and policy (most notably housing policy) to assist or derail convergence. Becker's model of intergenerational inequality formalises this, showing that outcomes are path-dependent on both initial genetic endowment and early environmental investments. This is also why there's a strong correlation between holding Abundance-pilled views and being a supporter of open borders, as both policy positions complement each other.

Regardless of my measured critique, it's abundantly clear that Abundance attracts attacks disproportionately from the low human capital participants in public life, as do attacks on open borders. If this wasn't the case, then why would Elizabeth Warren, a highly intelligent academic, calculate that pandering to somewhat conspiratorial myths that PE is driving up housing costs, will assist her popularity? More generally, the opposition to Abundance seems to be concentrated amongst the hard-leftist base that elected Mamdami, and is driving the Greens to overtake British Labour. Elite human capital theory previously highlighted how educational polarisation makes the centre-left relatively smarter, or at least incentivised not to be too stupid to hold onto the votes of educated people.

So how do we explain the rising prominence of economic illiteracy as a core focus of centre-left policy agendas, when previously things like rent control were at least marginalised to the fringes? I would argue that educational attainment is distinct from IQ. Their voter base are primarily the dissappointed graduates failing to command a substantial premium, or being economically squeezed. Especially given the likely erosion in the signalling value of many degrees given the expansion in higher education, it's far from obvious that these graduates are even on the right end of the IQ distribution.

If resentful graduates are indeed the future of leftist and liberal politics, and they succeed in raising the salience and relative status of economic illiteracy, then I fail to see how they're any preferable to the equivalent stupid zero-sum populists on the right. Leftists make us poorer via shackling the planning system, rightists via imposing invisible shackles to free movement. The very fact that neither of these burgeoning coalitions raise the smart critques of Abundance or open borders suggests that one should still support them, even if such support is qualified rather than unequivocal.

1. Even this likely overstates the costs of expanding high-density metropolitan areas. Despite the favelas, Rio De Janeiro is similarly as picture postcard stunning as Cape Town, as any reasonable observer with good eyesight will conclude.

2. In this case, welfare-improving in the utilitarian sense.

3. I've not put this through ChatGPT yet so lack firm estimates of the welfare calculation, yet the gains from open borders should at least be revised downwards.

4. Yes this is evidence in favour of high heritability estimates, and mostly genetic explanations for observed socioeconomic and behavioural differences between the races. Note that Jones’ work leaves this assumption implicit, via using the IQ estimates derived from Lynn. Nonetheless, these track proxies correlate with IQ very well, so Lynn's work (the most comprehensive effort at gathering international data on a crucial variable for everything we care about in the social sciences) is unfairly maligned; mostly by those with a deeply ideological and egalitarian blank-slateist agenda. Likewise, Jones is also notorious for showing that cross-country GDP differences can be accounted for by differences in technology stemming from a millennium ago.

Perhaps I am confusing anxiety, anticipation of harm or a negative future shock, with adrenaline. Very likely, the surge in levels of this hormone was necessary to hedge against pain from aches, and to promote a swift recovery. Yet it's precisely norepinephrine that's responsible for our endogenous “fight or flight” behaviours that characterise anxiety. Without this neurotransmitter, you cannot feel anxiety, although the reverse isn't true.

If this ex-post transitory surge in acute anxiety was linked to a meaningful change in the posterior probability of an adverse shock, then it can be justified. Yet you're much more likely to be harmed by crossing the road, or a car accident, than a random violent crime. You're much more likely to be a victim of violent crime on a booze-filled night out in a vibrant city-centre bar than on a quiet suburban street. Yet I engage in these activities on a regular basis, without any obvious hesitation. If anxiety was rational, these events rather than walking the streets alone should be more troublesome, yet my emotional concern is for the latter.

Therefore, anxiety is a profoundly irrational phenomenon uncorrelated with risk with little predictive power. Such biases are costly however, so rational agents seek to minimise them [1]. How does this apply to anxiety? Obviously, humanity's favourite intoxicant is consumed for this very purpose. The main mechanism via which alcohol produces euphoria is via reducing anxiety [2].

However, even abstracting from the rebound and alcohol's potential for physical or psychological dependence, I posit that the lifetime costs of any alcohol consumption always outweigh its gains. Fundamentally, alcohol is a depressant, thereby it hampers cognition. Given the importance of human capital both to individual and societal outcomes [3], this is not insignificant. Suppose we consider IQ as a constraint in a two-period model. In the first period, you can spend some points on getting drunk, or keep the points and invest in higher lifetime wealth (doing a productive activity). Next period, if you got drunk, your IQ returns to baseline. If you remained sober however, your lifetime wealth increases. Assume that wealth is utility, and you would be better off if you stayed on the wagon [4].

When we drink, we are in effect borrowing from our future utilities to increase our present utility. However, just as we borrow to finance purchases unaffordable to us with our present incomes alone, this borrowing is rational and justified. If we feel irrational anxiety, or any other temporary state of negative affect, and we borrow from a happier future, then this promotes our rationality. Just as with regular borrowing where you're broke if you rely on this, your mental and physical health (therefore your human capital) is depleted if you rely on liquor. Nonetheless, we don't condemn debt on the basis that some irresponsible individuals end up bankrupt, so neither should we condemn drinking or any other activity in which a positive discount rate is involved. Consider time discounting as the intertemporal substitution of utilities.

My conception of time discounting as intertemporal substitution makes sense once you consider how you distinguish time preference from intertemporal consumption. Credit constraints render a bias towards present consumption obvious, yet why should we call one intertemporal substitution along a utility function, and the other time preference, just because of one constraint? Empirically, you're generally unaware of one's financial situation, so you cannot easily make this distinction. Sure, HANK modelling is more structurally identified due to this separation, yet this is precisely what I called mathematical sophistry to fit the data. Ontologically, I think both are just different means to state the same thing, that we hold preferences relating to time and when we want to consume.

Perhaps models that do not explicitly microfound this as an intertemporal tradeoff, or require an extra parameter for discounting to fit the data, are bad models. Yet dynamic game theory relies on time discounting. Positively, discard the discount rate, and we lose many insights regarding how and why agents cooperate. Normatively, any weighting of the future less than the present could be considered as undermining growth via reducing physical and human capital accumulation. Yet it's plausible that recessions cause scarring. More present-minded individuals yield higher mpcs, and their discounting of future taxes undermines Ricardian equivalence. This myopia should aid a fiscal stimulus, so aid recovery, hence mitigate scarring. As such, it's not obvious that a positive discount rate is necessarily damaging for future prosperity once one considers carefully the dynamics, although a model is probably required.

Despite my defence of positive discount rates, both positively and normatively, this phenomenon is also associated with many of our worst pathologies and impulses (including my attack!). History demonstrates that we cannot take the existence of a stable civilisation for granted. Excessive time discounting is obviously pernicious.

Is there an optimal discount rate, and if so, what value does it take? I tend to consider discount rates as the opportunity cost of investment, as if I recieve a smaller sum now in lieu of a larger future sum, I can invest it into the capital markets. In our standard models, this return is the marginal product of capital - equivalent to the risk-free rate. In more complicated models of capital and asset heterogeneity, there are numerous returns that differ according to risk. Indeed, this explains how impatience tends to be correlated with risk-seeking, and if discounting was a bias (as most psychologists think) then we'd expect this to be uncorrelated with risk preference. One might also augment future returns via weighting with the probabilities of existential risk events, which may generate nonlinearities and hyperbolic discounting.

In principle, one can select a portfolio of returns, consistent with one's risk preferences, to match their discount rate. Yet this is not an arbitrary allocation, as not all values of return are possible. It appears that most, at least some of the time, discount at rates far in excess of what can be justified via returns in the capital markets. As a result, it's tempting to argue that we should place higher value on future periods than we currently do. Most versions of virtue ethics seek precisely to do this, whilst embedding our imperfections (so realising a rate of zero is unfeasible). However, we must seriously consider the possibility that a rational agent holds information regarding their own life and the relevant probabilities of future catastrophies that we don’t have access to. In any case, with much of medical science p-hacked to death, it’s unclear how we could live in a manner consistent with lower discounting even if we should or wanted to. Therefore, we should be incredibly suspicious of all paternalistic attempts to change our lifestyles, and not discount our individual rationality.

1. I like this framing of the expectations operator as a loss minimiser of forecasting errors. Of course such exist, and cognitive bias can produce them, yet over time agents learn. There's no reason to expect errors to be correlated, or cognitive bias to produce correlated errors, so the use of this operator is justified and rationality results. I think this is how we can square the standard rational choice framework with behavioural economics: rationality arises as we actively minimise our errors.

2. Albeit the mechanism focuses more on stimulating GABA so reducing inhibition, as opposed to suppressing norepinephrine per se. There are also notable increases in dopamine, serotonin, and endorphins, although I consider this a by-product of reduced anxiety.

3. Although I'm increasingly sceptical of models that imply that any investment into human capital always increases growth permanently. If that was the case, then it would be optimal to devote all resources to human capital. Such a conclusion denies the salient role of tradeoffs or opportunity costs, which is a fatal flaw for an econonic theory. Nonetheless, the returns to investing in human capital are positive, which is the main factor in this analysis.

4. Of course this is a highly simplistic framwork. What good is wealth for in a world devoid of pleasure, fun and convivality right? I'd argue that other intoxicants can promote cognition, via expanding one's set of perceptions or for (especially with stimulants) nootropic value. As for socialisation, vital for information aggregation so cognition and human capital, our culture of drinking indeed serves as a focal point. Yet this focal point is inefficient: as I've substantially moderated my consumption, I've noticed that much of what we consider socialisation is merely ritualistic bonding. How many conversations are good enough to learn from at a party, or even your median pub? I think the Bay Area rationalist culture of sober socialisation is far superior in this regard.

Why technocracy is incompatible with autocracy

Singapore is essentially ruled by elite human capital on steroids. With elite human capital converging towards globalisation and a lax attitude to immigration, whilst the right (and to a lesser extent the left too) are pivoting away from these principles, Singapore increasingly represents the sort of establishment “neoliberalism” that is widely condemned today. Amongst those most sympathetic towards globalisation, of a libertarian or classical liberal inclination, the authoritarianism of the PAP repels them. Indeed, whilst Singapore holds free and fair elections coupled with stringent libel regulations and gerrymandering, this is a nation that bans chewing gum and sends people to prison for three years for smoking a joint. Corporal punishment, cast aside as a human rights violation or parental abuse in the West, is a ubiquitous feature of school discipline and the legal system.

Hence, Singapore yields a more autocratic reputation than it deserves. Whilst the ruling party has been dominant on supermajorities since its independence, look at the electoral map of any large city in a democracy, and a single party tends to dominate. Rather than an aberration, one party holding a local monopoly on urban politics in many cities is the norm. Nonetheless, its autocratic reputation renders Singapore the go-to example for autocrats to justify the merits of autocracy over democracy, which further undermines Singapore's reputation amongst liberals.

Yet an EHC autocracy is rare: most autocrats obtain legitimacy via grand Manichean ideological narratives, sectarianism, or kleptocratic rent-seeking amongst the ruling class. In the absence of manipulating our primitive in vs out zero-sum sentiments, they tend to survive by providing sufficient opportunities for brazen corruption amongst public sector officials. Often they rely on conspiracy theories and relentless disinformation campaigns, as we see with MAGA and Putin, whilst Singapore prohibits anything resembling a whiff of deception in its public discourse. Therefore autocracies tend to select against technocracy, even if in equilibrium competition with democracies restrain the worst impulses of many. Even the Gulf States, the other examples of “succesful” autocracies, institutionalise nepotism, which generates inefficient misallocation. The failure of NEOM and the billions poured into indefinitely cancelled projects in Dubai are testament to this. Much of the space in their completed skyscrapers remains empty.

Neoreactionaries long advocated for a network of authoritarian technocratic city-states, but now its apparent that dictatorship tends to be incompatible with technocracy. From Putin miscalculating the ease of conquering Ukraine, to Xi's revanchist nationalism scaring away global investors, the lacklustre performance of “succesful” authoritarian models are clear. As a result, the neoreactionary movement has disintegrated; either merging with the small-l liberal rationalist community, or (as with Yarvin) aligning with MAGA. As democracy emerges as superior, there is a corresponding decline in Singapore being cited as an illiberal model state. As those embracing autocratic tendencies are rejecting technocratic EHC, there is no need to point to Singapore, which shows that everything they hate is consistent with prosperity.

Why technocracy is inferior to democracy

Even if a technocratic dictatorship, that implemented every since one of my policy prescriptions, was feasible, I am increasingly turning against such. I live in a country where the relentless expansion of the policing of speech and association basically mirrors Singapore's policing of speech deemed offensive or misinformation. Send out a poorly-worded tweet impulsively, and jail time becomes a realistic prospect. Retweeting a tweet later shown to be false, that's spreading misinformation, which in “sensitive” times is grounds for arrest. I cannot even read many Substacks without having to verify my identity. Public order offences also mirror Singapore's restrictions on protest.

If these onerous speech restrictions were in place throughout Covid, then anyone with a sensible objection to masks or lockdowns would be detained for “threatening the safety of the public”. Indeed, the lockdowns themselves were the case of a select minority of medical professionals engaging in central planning across the entire economy and society, to keep the public safe. Likewise, misinformation laws open up opportunities for arbitrary arrest and politically-motivated persecution. Misinformation over biological sex was tolerated throughout the great awokening. The temptation for any benevolent social planner to deviate from technocracy to use such laws for their own rent-seeking or political gains is too strong. There cannot be a credible commitment to neutrally enforce speech restrictions.

We should be grateful for living in liberal democracies, despite the inherent degree of some disorderly chaos that such endogenously generates. There is something to be said for life in a less immaculate environment, but with more scope for pursuing cultural interests without worrying about causing offence. With the British government cracking down on vaping, floating bans for tobacco, and zero-proof beverages, we are increasingly resembling Singapore in nanny statism. Singapore maintains a reputation for boredom for a reason - with the exception of Hawker Centres, their paternalistic stifling of public life exerts a downstream effect on entertainment, hospitality, and nightlife.

One underrated reason why the right has fallen out of love with Singapore is also that Singapore practices wokeness on steroids. Their speech restrictions are justified on the basis of promoting racial harmony in a multicultural society. To this end, they adopt racial quotas in parliamentary seats, for presidential terms, and even in allocating public housing (the vast majority of the housing stock in Singapore). Whilst justified not on perceived structural discrimination but for the purpose of maintaining public security (especially as racial riots are salient in the historical legacy of the nation), the overreach is as ominous as the worst moments of the great awokening. Again, if elites side with woke ideology, then this is further grounds for rejecting technocracy.

Singapore as a charter city, and on why governments rarely arise from first-principles

Recently, the Gulf States are eroding the attention that Singapore receives, yet they are not the only competition that Singapore faces. Charter cities, seasteading institutes, and the general nascent movement to establish small nation states, are inspired largely by Singapore. However, most of these projects are floundering. Very few are voting with their feet to move to such locales.

Singapore arose into existence as an independent city-state due to unique historical circumstances. Ethnic tensions forced a breakaway from Malaysia, and Lee Kuan Yew maintained a sufficiently strong grip on power (able to unite multiple ethnic and ideological groups by emphasising a non-dogmatic pragmatic approach to governing) to transform Singapore in his own image. The extent of Singapore's transformation into a wealthy charter-city today is largely a product of historical contingency, and chance. Imagine if the leader was not Lee Kuan Yew, but Assad or Saddam Hussein (also faced with multiple ethnic groups yet pandering to sectarianism)? Singapore could have very easily turned into a failed state.

In general, I am tending to the idea that all political equilibria across and within nations are constrained by path-dependent cultural and historical contingencies. The failure of most charter cities demonstrates that first-principles thinking, the basis for technocracy, is often by itself insufficient. As this realisation, via repeated experiments with microstates, the more we see Singapore as a unique product of circumstance that will never arise again. This reduces the payoff of citing Singapore as an example in political discourse, and also should update one towards endogenising political constraints when evaluating policy. As intellectuals, we like to suggest what is optimal, yet the set of possible outcomes is finite.

Ultimately, this competition is welfare improving for the citizens of both types of polities. Indeed, this is why I'm not dogmatic on whether a nation is democratic or autocratic (mirroring American foreign policy, which despite its rhetoric supports autocracies broadly aligned with its economic and geopolitical interests) - we need both to facilitate this discipline via competition. Overall, I tend to consider democracy as mildly superior from the perspective of maximising growth, yet this claim is not a universal absolute. There exists multiple Pareto optimal equilibria across nations in this respect.

However, it strikes me that there are two broad arguments for holding a normative bias in favour of democracy. From a Schumpeterian perspective, democracies facilitate creative destruction in institutions, in a peaceful manner, and this spurs innovation in governance. Russia is at war with Ukraine in large part because Putin is a relic of the Soviet downfall, so the war reflects his personal grievances from decades past, whilst most others have moved on. The Cultural Revolution maintains a powerful grip on the CCP to this day, as many of its elite (including Xi himself) came of age during that period.

Another (somewhat related) reason to favour democracy is that stable, thereby the more “successful” autocracies, are overwhelmingly gerontocratic. Necessarily, if you cannot depose a ruler, then they will inevitably age in office. Look at the lists of the oldest or longest-serving leaders, and they're overwhelmingly autocrats. Musevini’s latest victory is a prime example of this. An increasing number of autocrats today have been in power for at least three decades. Not only do individuals suffer cognitive decline as they age (as Biden demonstrated), but a culture of gerontocracy can be linked to an increasingly anti-natal culture.

Yet access to culture has never been more seamless. Want to view the latest Rembrandts? Just download one onto your phone gallery. Is Beethoven's 3rd symphony your melodic orgasm? Listen to it for free on SoundCloud today. Revising your memory of the classics, and fancy a read of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice? Again, a feat that can be done online for free. If you live in a major city, I won't even uncover the plethora of food options or gigs and other cultural events regularly available.

Alternatively, you may be into an emo subculture - never has it been a better time to satisfy your cultural tastes. Or maybe you're a classic nerd that enjoys playing board games for hours? In Leeds, there are shops regularly hosting events where anyone can just show up to play. Chess? Look out for the matches in the town/city squares. A niche sexual fetish that you're repressing in daily interactions - the seedier parts of the Web will take care of that.

A devout Muslim? There are plenty of towns and cities in Britain where that lifestyle is culturally incentivised. Contrary to the prevailing narrative on the right, British Muslims mostly just want to practice their faith freely in peace, and will not coerce others to adhere. In this sense, most Muslims are liberal and assimilated into a core value of the West. What is this core value? Cultural heterogeneity. It seems to me that a core emphasis of liberalism and multiculturalism is on cultural heterogeneity - the ability to practice whatever lifestyle you choose, and match with like-minded others, free from social or legal persecution. Unsurprisingly, as Western society becomes more globalised, liberal, and secular, we are living in an unprecedented area of cultural diversification. Any small niche will now easily be catered for. The internet, by reducing fixed costs to approximately zero, increases the supply-side of culture too, and facilitates easier search and matching. From reading lists of the best music of 2025, it's apparent that not many share my enthusiasm for electronic drum and bass music, so if I was reliant on the centralised legacy media for my music, I would be much worse off as a result. For those of us with unconventional pursuits, there has never been a better time to live!

Cultural heterogeneity may also promote cultural evolution, which via epigenetic mechanisms may accelerate biological evolution. This value is an underrated benefit of liberalism, and an underrated driver of innovation, in my view. Hence, I'm sceptical of the notion of cultural drift. Globally, our institutional cultures are converging onto a universalist liberalism, of the sort espoused by Kant. Yet this only focuses on one dimension of culture, and increased homogeneity on this dimension actively promotes heterogeneity on the other dimensions.

As for the claim that beauty has disappeared as a salient driver of modern aesthetics, for anyone to credibly believe that, you would have to be a Philistine blind to most contemporary artworks. Richter, Klimt, Twombly, and (my favourite) Hockney - how can anyone say their paintings are so not possess a deep sense of intricate, euphoric, almost overpowering beauty? Yes, most “pop” music, TV, films, and artwork are absolute drivel: this was almost certainly the case for any time in human history. We inevitably recall only the very good works, which is why the past may appear culturally superior. A classic form of availability bias continues to pervade cultural commentary to this day.

Regarding the proliferation of short-form, this is a classic case of increased specialisation and much lower transaction costs to information exchange. Previously, if you had a thought, it was essential to wait until you had enough (chains of) thoughts, plus a sense of coherence to unify them, to write a book or an opinion piece. You had to jump through hoops to get published. Then with the internet came blogging. Afterwards, social media. Not everyone has enough content worth writing to create longform, yet do we not benefit from others’ contributions on X? I certainly do, and on here I regularly cite thoughtful X posts. In this Coasian sense, the market is more complete, and trade in ideas that individuals were willing yet previously unable to enact can now go ahead. This is an unambiguous welfare gain, considering the positive spillovers of ideas. For those with a preference for consuming and publishing longform, a burgeoning market for such exists today on Substack. This patterns holds for other mediums too: TikTok vs YouTube documentaries a prime instance of this specialisation.

Most of the recent empirical literature establishing a causally negative effect of social media on cognition reports small average treatment effects. Yes, even small ATEs can accumulate to generate large aggregate costs. Yet how do we square these results for the cultural dominance of social media with the Flynn effect? The answer is that the studies measure ‘cognition’ via PISA scores, or educational attainment, rather than raw IQ (presumably to get the socially desirable results). We all know that EA is a weighted average of IQ and conscientiousness, and to a lesser extent status variables, with wide variation in accordance with attention (so exogenous distractions themselves presumably introduce an endogenous measurement bias here?). Moreover, is PISA even the right dependent variable to measure? It's not obvious to me that the most valuable knowledge, acquired in the most cost-effective manner, is derived via schooling. Most of my acquired knowledge has been derived from the internet. With regard to reading physical books, where do I find out about those books on my list? You guessed it, the internet!

The Web has served as an outstanding tool for highly intelligent individuals to enhance their consumption of (and hence their production function of) ideas, independent of established institutions that may prioritise prestige and conformity over knowledge, and hence drag those individuals down. These geniuses drive our knowledge economy, and the scientific and technological advancements that propel growth and the Enlightenment. None of the commentary on social media contagion has focused on the tail effects, and the resulting positive externalities.

Overall, cultural pessimists tend to focus on some moving average of cultural utility, as opposed to the second moment. Yet it seems that the variance itself is an especially important point estimate of cultural richness, particularly when fixed costs to many forms of cultural production are near zero, and transaction costs to cultural exchanges are near zero. These changes to the supply-side, coupled with a markedly increased tolerance of cultural heterogeneity, to the extent that this is perhaps the predominant value that distingues the West from other cultures, is driving a cultural renaissance that we are all living through right now. Don't be a pessimist - take advantage of the best society and age in history to live in!

An important caveat is that, were a libertarian autocracy ever to arise, then I would likely support that. Such a government is likely not incentive-compatible however. How would citizens, many of whom as far from libertarian preferences as possible, voluntarily establish such a system? You would have to enact a coup to achieve this, yet militaries and other groups reliant on the use of violence alone (without consent) to enforce their beliefs can hardly be trusted to stick with libertarian principles. Autocracies are generally reliant upon rent extraction and opaque patronage networks for survival - amounting to a substantial tax on growth, and a distortion of outcomes. This is likely why Tabarrok (whom I agree with on most policy matters) finds that democracy is correlated with economic freedom, and this is likely (to some extent) causal. Besides, whilst there are a few autocracies that embraced capitalism, every socialist economy is autocratic. Venezuela, Zimbabwe, North Korea, Khmer Rouge, Mao, Stalin - if there is one lesson to learn from these examples, it's that tail risks must be considered when deliberating on optimal institutions.

I used to highlight the Gulf as an example of efficient autocracies, yet Neom, and the billions were squandered on perpetually cancelled projects in Dubai, shows how an economy subject to the whims of a king will misallocate resources according to the preferences of one man. This is also closely related to the Hayekian argument I discussed in my last post. Likewise, I consider Hanania's defence of the mainstream media to be another example of how liberal democracies (with the necessary norms and checks) optimise information aggregation. Obviously, this is vital for the innovation that drives endogenous growth.

Regular readers will be wondering at this point why I have abandoned my previous idea of a network of for-profit charter cities and seasteading ventures, where people “vote” with their feet, to replace the post-Westphalian order of nation states. I still support innovation in government on the margin. However, on reflection of geopolitical developments in the last half-decade, I'm convinced by Nozick’s argument that scale is necessary to defend against the (ever-present) threat of war by a much larger power. If one cluster of cities doesn't integrate, another will. Rational actors know this, so via backward induction, larger political entities will arise. Indeed, this is the story of how Carthage got destroyed by the Romans: a vital lesson that anarcho-capitalists must heed. Moreover, I basically recreated Yarvin’s neoreactionary philosophy from first principles, and if I'm in agreement (on a fundamental principle) with an intellectual fraud, then I'm missing an important step in my reasoning. There's no guarantee that charter cities would necessarily advance a libertarian agenda. In fact, patronage, corruption, and feudalism, could be considered examples of for-profit governments. The idea that they yield the correct incentives to facilitate capitalism cannot be assumed.

Whilst we're on the subject of violence, Pinker highlighted in his famous book on conflict, that liberal democracies since 1945 have never waged war against one another. This is a significant factor in the reduction of interstate violence in the last century. I discuss this in more detail in my last post; right now I will deal with one counterargument. A key argument in favour of democracy is that it promotes the peaceful transfer of power. Without it, civil wars and coups occur. Yet Sudan shows that, in some cases, autocracies prevent civil wars from occuring. Hence, my defence of democracy is not a universal defense, but a generalised claim that holds in most cases.

However, democracies are prone to electing populists that exert negative institutional effects, and populism is also a tax on growth. See here for my definition of populism, yet most can agree on who is or is not populist, so let's move on from tedious semantics. Obviously, many autocracies are populist, and populism tends to descend into anocratic or autocratic rule. Yet is a non-populist autocracy preferable to a populist democracy? It seems to be that the most important variable of concern is designing institutions such that non-populist elites maintain power, democracy or not.

Define elites as:

1. Motivated primarily by status and prestige (not necessarily money per se), with some concern for integrity. Generally the most educated and intelligent subset of citizens.

2. Advocate for liberal democratic institutions, and will work to impose constraints on electoral outcomes if necessary to maintain them (see last hyperlink).

3. A tendency towards liberalism in outlook. A consistent finding in social science is that intelligence is correlated with liberalism. If rational agents cannot honestly disagree, and all disagreements are a function of search costs to information acquisition given heterogenous priors (you could consider higher IQ as reducing search costs), then it seems sensible to conclude that over time, smart individuals converge to liberalism whilst Bayesian updating.

These are the class of individuals we want in power. Education polarisation puts all the stupid people onto one side, with (as we see with Trump) grave consequences for policy when they hold power. The populist tax in action!

Therefore, we want to design democracies with an anti-majoritarian slant, and which minimise polarisation. Obviously, checks and balances constrain the leviathan. In electoral outcomes however, I consider proportional representation systems as superior due to their fragmented outcomes, and the general necessity for coalition. Should a populist and low-IQ party ever gain significant traction, elites can impose the cordon sanitaire to block them from power. Alternatively, they may share power with the populists, yet the nature of coalition government further constrains their destructive impulses. Yes, establishment parties may adopt some populist policies to move closer to the median voter, yet this is a small price worth paying in comparison with majority rule by populists. As I said, democracy is second-best.

One can now consider liberal democracy, contrary to how democracy is conventionally conceptualised, as oligarchic. If liberal democracy works well, then only a small and highly selective elite calls the shots where it matters, in policy. Paradoxically, good democracies are elitist - indeed one of the most common criticisms of Western institutions. This is a good thing, and is why I can embrace democracy.

It may be time to do the equivalent link for Substack posts I've read in due course…

Firstly, we should establish that America actually does renege against the liberal world order when it suits it. I can think of case that demonstrates such. America’s involvement in Ukraine is often justified on the basis of preventing annexation of territory. A fixed map of nation states is regarded as integral to global peace. If one nation changes the map without punishment, then this emboldens other nations to pursue their irredentist claims. Yes the norm against regime change is weaker, and the reason why America is the primary enforcer of regime change is that (unlike other countries) it yields the state capacity to do so, which should tell you something about the American model in comparison with its detractors. Yet America may soon recognise Somaliland, Morocco’s sovereignty over the Western Sahara, and floated the Trumpian one-state solution to the Palestine conflict. South Sudan and Montenegro get recognised by most countries on Earth without any issues.

One may then argue that what makes Ukraine a special case is that we have a classic Manichean battle of democracy against autocracy, good against evil, and that America has a moral obligation to defend democracy. Indeed, upholding democracy itself is a major principle of the international order, which is in large part why it's a liberal order. I agree that democracy is a variable of interest here. Putin's motives for the war are to reclaim Russia's past “glory” after being subject to a lost decade of humiliation from the West. Ukraine pivoting towards NATO was the icing on the cake here. Yet how does this square with the preferences of the Ukrainians, the Russians in Ukraine, and the Russian citizens? Ex-ante, did anyone really care about redeeming a past wrong for the sake of “national pride” or “glory”? Democracies do not perfectly aggregate the preferences of its citizens, yet it's obvious that it introduces a dynamism from its focus on accountability that makes it superior to dictatorships on this front. Here we have the preferences of one man, a whole economy the size of Italy subject to the preferences of one man, holding the priorities of the immediate post-USSR era when most others have moved on, waging war against a democracy on those preferences that may not reflect aggregate preferences. Raising the cost of a major war provoked by a revanchist dictatorship is a legitimate foreign policy interest in itself in my view.

In general, America’s legitimacy in upholding and policing the world order is derived in significant part from it being a democracy, and the alliances it forms with other democracies. Those alliances, the West, is united via a shared belief system in liberal democracy. Democratisation is generally the trend across the world too, more so if you consider the flow of people across borders (most to democracies), so this democracy based order carries legitimacy. Those liberal democracies almost never wage war against one another, which shows that a Kantian peace amongst democracies is a large factor in the decline in global conflict as documented by Steven Pinker. We would not have to ask if Russia would still wage war against Ukraine if it was a democracy, as we already know that it almost certainly wouldn't!

Nonetheless, America is willing to tolerate, and often support, dictatorships when it suits its national interest. Generally, across history, this has been because the alternative (mostly communism or Islamist fundamentalism) is worse. However, this does show that America weights its global support for democracy alongside its other liberal values, such as support for capitalism.

Therefore, America is a hypocritical power. In classic game-theoretic scenarios, this hypocrisy and lack of enforcement capabilities against such hypocrisy should undermine the entire Kantian peace. Indeed, this is the main difference in geopolitical perspectives between the US and Europe, and Republicans vs Democrats, with the latter in both cases stressing the value of adherence to global norms. What this perspective lacks however is that the Kantian peace is an American peace; never based on a series of immutable deontological principles, but on a liberal hegemony with the state capacity to globally enforce its values. If we were to apply the categorical imperative to everything, then we could not send people to prison, as rationally it undermines a core human desire giving the other party the logical legitimacy to do the same. We adhere to principles and norms in large part to signal our moral worthiness, whilst acting as strict self-maximising utilitarian consequentialists otherwise. Our institutions and geopolitics functions in the same manner. Our “international order” is largely a product of American imperialism and hegemony, and this is unambiguously a good thing.

Consider instead global peace and security as a public goods problem. America provides that public good. It satisfies the IR constraints of nations aligned with American interests (generally liberal democracies, but can include capitalist autocracies such as the Gulf states), and the IR constraint of America (enhanced global security, and reduced nuclear proliferation, yields positive spillovers for American security). For the IC constraints to be satisfied, these nations unite by a shared belief system: call this “liberalism”. This liberalism and democracy, by aggregating the preferences of its citizens better than other systems, guarantees the legitimacy of those national governments, and America’s leadership. Because America yields this legitimacy, its return for providing the public good is that it yields the legitimacy to unilaterally use force abroad to defend its interests, which are generally aligned with liberal values in the long-run. The rational common knowledge that those nation states within this order are aggregations of the preferences of their citizens, with a distaste for war, means that nations in the order can be confident that they will never wage war against one another.

A Kantian peace, fuelling peace amongst democracies, arises. Outside of this liberal democratic alliance, this peace is less guaranteed. Even capitalism alone cannot guarantee this, as perhaps best exemplified via the rise in geopolitical tensions with China despite its turn towards markets. Nuclear weapons cannot explain why non-nuclear powers often attack nuclear powers (most recently, Hamas against Israel).

Moreover, upholding this peace often requires the use of force against nation states that do not submit to liberal values, “regime change”. The liberal world-order has always served individuals first and foremost; sovereignty being a convenient heuristic to respect to make peace more likely, yet not an unconditional constraint. Values are not credibly upheld using words, but require the use of tangible (often costly and risky) action to support them. What can be a better way to demonstrate your support for liberal capitalism than liberating a socialist hellhole on your doorstep? Yes, this is imperialism: imposing your rules onto another nation regardless of whether they voluntarily submit.

Yes, this liberal imperialism is justified, and indeed its track record in outcomes is positive. We consider the rare cases (usually in the Middle East) where nation building and interventions fail, yet (due to negativity bias) neglect the successes. Sierra Leone? Yugoslavia? We updated far too strongly on the War on Terror, and for the last decade have been cowered into timidity as a result. As US foreign policy becomes more interventionist again, alongside its alliance with an emboldened Israel to enact its interests in the Middle East, we could be seeing an imminent end to the Iranian theocracy. Would this have occured if the West continued to restrain itself with its guilt?

In light of these geopolitical developments, I have updated some of my views myself. Democracies consistently vote for gerontocratic welfare states, closed borders, and protectionism: a tyranny of the majority, so for a long time I've been sceptical of the utility of democracy. However, the alternative, an economy operating under the whims of one man, is far worse. Hayek demonstrated that decentralised processes are the only means to aggregate information regarding preferences, and centralised mechanisms of authority will almost certainly make mistakes (as Russia's overconfidence in invading Ukraine demonstrates). Accurate information aggregation is vital for state capacity, and is a reason why Russia and China are still weak compared to America, or else they'd have retaliated to the operation against Maduro.

While we are on the subject of state capacity, this is the variable that allows us to depose a socialist maniac with limited damage, and to engage in the task of nation building. Only America has demonstrated the state capacity to perform this feat. Therefore scale is also crucial, and so whilst in the past I advocated for replacing the order of nation states with charter cities competing for citizens, such an idealistic utopia cannot occur in a world where scale is necessary to uphold global stability, and defend against threats to our liberties. Only an American empire - a Kantian peace amongst fellow liberal democracies, and occasionally subjecting nations that refuse to submit with force - can spread freedom across the planet.

Crémieux writes the following:

“After the DSM-III became available, clinicians started diagnosing more and more children with the condition: an autism diagnosis was a shiny new tool in the psychiatric arsenal. To qualify for a diagnosis, a child had to be judged as having all of six different criteria, including “Onset before 30 months of age”, “pervasive lack of responsiveness to other people”, “gross deficits in language development”, “if speech is present, peculiar speech patterns such as immediate and delayed echolalia, metaphorical language, pronominal reversal”, “bizarre responses to various aspects of the environment”, and “absence of delusions, hallucinations, loosening of associations, and incoherence as in schizophrenia.”

Prior to this, autism was only diagnosed for the highly nonverbal that required intensive support. DSM III marks the departure of autism from a severe learning disability, as these set of symptoms can be consistent with high intelligence and a fully-functioning and independent livelihood. DSM IV then expanded the possible set of symptoms to seventeen, and one only needed a score of six to be diagnosed. Crucially, one no longer needed to have suffered delays in language acquisition; paving the way for Asperger's (distinct from classic autism by the very absence of delayed language learning) to be merged under the creation of the spectrum in 2013 with the DSM V.

My mental model of ASD conceives of three categories consistent with the DSM III criteria, with some overlap:

1. The nonverbal, or those requiring intensive round-the-clock care. Intellectually handicapped, and cannot live independently.

2. Those that can function independently, and are often of high intelligence. They also encountered a delay in language development.

3. Asperger's - characterised as (2) with no delays to language development.

All three share the symptoms of communication frictions, enhanced sensory processing (often to the point of notable discomfort), and a proclivity towards repetition with obsessive interests. Henceforth, I am not opposed to the DSM III criteria, although I do view Asperger's and autism as worthy of distinct diagnoses. I can usually sense if an individual is on the spectrum. Our relatively flat tonal and rhythmic patterns of spoken communication, and idiosyncrasies in frequency and volume of speech relative to the neurotypical party of an interaction, and more “robotic” body coordination, tends to give it away. All of us also yield a preference for literal speech, as opposed to idioms or sarcasm, or even metaphors for me. It has been noted that I tend to speak in rather elongated manner1. These mannerisms are subtle yet distinct, and therefore our neurological profile is indeed distinct from neurotypicals, and not solely a social construct of diagnosis.

Nonetheless, there is marked heterogeneity between the level of assistance required for the three categories. Those with Asperger's may appear superficially “socially awkward”, yet they clearly suffer no abnormal development hence any need for accomodations (as mandated in equality laws) is not obvious. Those in categories (2) may require additional support within their early childhoods, yet once they can communicate intelligibly with neurotypicals, they tend to share the same features as aspies. Only category (1) can credibly be conceptualised as a mental disability requiring substantial medical attention. For the rest of us, autism or Asperger's is no more dehabilitating than a cluster B personality disorder.

As such, it seems sensible to revive the distinction between Asperger's and autism, as they differ in language acquisition and hence need for additional accommodation in early childhood. Of course, whether a child ends up in category (2) or (1) may not be easily identifiable ex-ante. How do we predict the likely outcome? My intuition is that intelligence is the separating factor here - those in category (1) generally have left-tail IQ scores consistent with intellectual disability. Those in category (2) tend to be within one standard-deviation point from the mean, and when they do depart, it is overwhelmingly on the right-tail.

So the solution to overdiagnosis is obvious. Just IQ test everyone who receives an autism diagnosis in early childhood. However, this would require overcoming the entrenched ideological opposition to the very concept of IQ - one of the hallmarks of wokeness, as can be seen in their institutionalised discouragement under anti-discrimination laws, and the insistence of blank-slateists to attribute 100% of the gap in mean black and white IQ scores to environment.

Indeed, my opposition to the nascent neurodiversity ideology is derivative. Not only is the neurodiversity movement an extension of wokeness, and an attempt to place us within their hierarchy of the oppressed, it is also epistemologically bunk. No, we are not just one bundled set of cognitive traits uniformally distributed across everyone. There are clear trait correlations that reflect an underlying distinct neurobiology. There are discrete heterogeneities in severity of disability, which have obvious implications for their optimal institutional treatment. Yes, I used the word disability specifically, as neurodiversity theory advocates will deny that ASD is a disability, yet claim that disability is not to be stigmatised and viewed as a negative. Their obsessive pursuit of political correctness requires this gaping contradiction.

My concern regarding the neurodiversity concept is not solely an opposition to the wider DEI agenda, nor solely rooted in my desire to restrict anti-discrimination and disability laws to the greatest extent that politics will allow. As autistic individuals, we disproportionately care about the truth for its own sake. We do not consume ideas to signal, nor to self-aggrandise. Indeed many of us hate signalling, and find the elaborate norms and rituals relating to signalling bizarre or frustrating. We simply want theory to match with empirics. Neurodiversity clearly does not align with the empirical data, and is instead an elaborate ritual of self-aggrandisement by autistics whom desperately seek to be regarded as “normal” whilst denying that deviance from “normal” is bad! What they fail to notice is, by aggregating Elon Musk into the same condition as an intellectually disabled person who requires a carer for basic household maintenance, they diminish the former. If you wish to help the autists who need it, we must clearly start from an accurate representation of the condition.