Maybe solitude is one of the necessary ingredients for an annus mirabilis, and there's long been a shortage of that?

Cool, much to think about.

I don't think populism is an ideology. I think you mean MAGA, which is one. Populism in general isn't what you think it is.

I don't understand why you don't mention any religions. I suppose this text is implicitly US-centric, even while on the explicit level it makes a lot of strong claims to general validity.

Interesting. Borderline or PTSD rather than cyclothymia?
 

I don't disagree that's where a standard clinical interview would end up, but aren't these basically residual categories where to put people who aren't sane but don't clearly fit any of the other boxes? Like, not false, but it doesn't exactly constrain the space of where that weird outlier mind of his might be going next.

I'd be very interested in what would happen if he couldn't have his phone for a week.

I love this very much, so I turned it into a poem, that I think could be lyrics for a song (using tunes like "Amazing Grace" or "House if the Rising Sun") for people like the Bayesian Choir or occasions like the Secular Solstice.

https://sevensecularsermons.org/the-twelve-virtues-of-rationality

Maybe the part about the nameless virtue should be a chorus repeated after each of the first eleven, instead of a tinal stanza, to remind that this one is before the others, and because songs with choruses are good?

First I heard of it was from an anesthesiologist who was very happy with how it is the only way to get to full anesthesia without depressing the patient's heart rate, so for senior patients it was really the only option. In retrospect, his enthusiasm about it does seem suspicious, but we were surrounded by professors and I don't think he was lying.

What's true already is the case, not worse from owning up. To not be open anyways will never make it stop.

Because it's real, it is there for interaction with. What is untrue cannot be where there's truth that we can live.

And we can stand reality, the truth that we admit. We know because we're already in fact enduring it.

Yes Scott's analysis was more believable than yours. That continues to be the case.

I think high pressure environments such as startups and cults need to avoid having members who cannot handle high pressure, such as people genetically predisposed to psychotic breaks, or people who are taking too many psychedelics.

Cults actually do this. I claim expertise here because I have a master's degree in psychology of religion and some minor but peer-reviewed published papers on new religious movements. I have found that cults tend to have screening procedures to weed out the psychotic among the applicants, because these always make trouble. (Cults get a lot more of those applicants than the average proportion among the general population.) There are differences, but the commonality is that the person is taught a protective exercise (some of these I actually think might plausibly help) and told to do that exercise in case of distressing events of the particular type. Then if they continue to report such experiences, it is their own fault for having done too little of the exercise, and then that is reason enough to throw them out.

MIRI is not a cult but maybe it should learn from them.

You are right, I agree.

It seems to me that some types of highly hierarchical organizations rely on this propsed "mindless follower switch" more heavily than others: religions, militaries, political parties come to mind. These all lean male. And they all used to be entirely male, until they were reformed during evolutionarily recent trends against gender inequality. 

Thank you for your excellent work. It is much more extensive than I knew. I have much enjoyed your ACX Podcast and will definitely check out some of the other things you linked here.

Please kindly consider narrating my Seven Secular Sermons at https://www.sevensecularsermons.org . I have made my own recordings, but on poor equipment and with faint a German accent. I'm sure you could far surpass those if you wanted.