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Moment of Zen Ep 10 w/ Amjad Masad

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Moment of Zen Ep 10 w/ Amjad Masad

Disutility, rise and fall of intellectual movements, what virtues are you talking about bro?, and a look ahead to Episode 11.

Mar 3, 2023
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Moment of Zen Ep 10 w/ Amjad Masad

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Hey MOZarts,
Someone tell Antonio to keep hopping on our Riverside calls…

Twitter avatar for @antoniogm
Antonio García Martínez (agm.eth) @antoniogm
I keep getting this videoconference invite from these strange dudes, and they always record the whole thing and publish it after. Super weird.
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Erik Torenberg @eriktorenberg
E10 of @MOZ_Podcast w/ @amasad is up! We discuss: - Replika & disenfranchised men - AI doomerism / AI safety / Big Yud - The challenges with Effective Altruism - Whether politics is downstream of culture https://t.co/WlESjhJUGh
11:21 PM ∙ Feb 26, 2023
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Disutility

Amjad shared that he arrived at the conclusion that utilitarianism was flawed in his early twenties. He found that it led to repugnant conclusions and believed that having principles and virtues to guide oneself in life was important, in addition to focusing on outcomes. He argued that solely relying on utilitarianism could result in disastrous consequences due to errors in predictions and spreadsheets. Furthermore, he mentioned that it is possible to justify anything with infinite utility or disutility, which makes utilitarianism irrational. Masad cites the problem of Pascal's mugging, where discounting infinity is difficult, and suggested applying probabilities to future events instead.

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Rise and Fall of Intellectual Movements

Amjad also discussed the rise and fall of various intellectual movements such as New Atheism, Social Justice, and Effective Altruism. He explained how these movements started with a kernel of truth and became deranged over time. A wave of New Atheism picked up after 9/11, particularly with Sam Harris and others discussing the problem of Islam and how religion is a dangerous force in the world. However, this movement lost steam as people began to see that pure theistic obsession also has problems. Social Justice then gained traction but became lame after Trump's election. Effective Altruism emerged as another intellectual movement that used utilitarian arguments to maximize happiness across the world. Masad predicts that the current movement of safety will take the same direction as social justice did, becoming national and militant, and that all these movements share a characteristic of becoming deranged over time and attacking anyone who does not believe like them.


What Virtues are you Talking About, Bro?

Antonio on virtue ethics —“Sam Bankman Fried (SBF) basically robbed people blind for ten million dollars. But if he actually saved enough people, would it be worthwhile? That's one question we're not asking. Like, was that the calculus going on in SBF's head? And if so, was he wrong? What if he had gotten away with it? What if the crypto markets hadn't tanked in 2022 and he made a bunch of money, and then he cured some disease in the world? Was it worth it? By the calculus, it would have been, but I think by most calculus it would not have been. [William] MacCaskill, actually tweeted, 'No, but by the way, we need virtue ethics.' Well, what virtues are you talking about, bro? They're not in the fucking spreadsheet. Why do I care about them? That's the fundamental problem? That's why utilitarianism, unguided by deontology, meaning a more rules-based system, is basically insane. And that's the short version, agreed."


Highlighting Youtube Comments

As a reminder, we look through every YouTube comment and wish to continue highlighting the good, the be better, and the funny. Fortunately, this week’s comments were overwhelmingly positive so seems like we’re doing some things right.

The Good

The Be Better

The Funny

We unbiasedly agree.


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Listen now on Youtube | Apple | Spotify | Google

Links for references discussed in this episode

  • 17:30 - Link to Justin Murphy tweet [photo]

  • 19:00 - Economics in one Lesson & Thomas Sowell

  • 21:00 - How Asia works

  • 22:30 - Coming Apart - Read about Charles Murray here

  • 26:00 - WTFhappened in 1971

  • 30:10 - The Bitcoin Standard

  • 32:10 - Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld’s book The Triple package

  • 35:10 - Richard Reeves’ Of Boys and Men / Nicholas Eberstadt's Men Without Work

  • 36:23 - Women want men over 6 feet

  • 39:00 - The Ordeal of Civility by John Murray Cuddihy

  • 42:00 - Joseph Henrich’s WEIRDest People In the World

  • 44:00 - The Restless Republic and Dominion

  • 59:00 - Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene, Christopher Hitchens’ God is not great

  • Eliezer Yudkowsky’s tweet about abortion at 18 months

  • 01:08:50 - Pascal’s Mugging

  • 01:09:03 - Bayesianism

  • 01:20:00 - Peter Singer

  • 01:22:00 - Eliezer Yudkwosky 

  • 01:29:00 - Robert Conquest Second law

  • 01:31:00 - Entryisim

  • 1:35:30 - Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals

  • 1:39:00 - Mercatus Center

  • Bryan Caplan’s Don’t be a Feminist

  • Joe Lonsdale article To Save America, Restore Our Frontier

  • Joe Lonsdale’s University of Austin

  • NYT recent In Defense of J.K. Rowling

Full episode below. Moment of Zen is still evolving and we want to know what is most valuable to you. What do you want us to talk about or share in this newsletter? Leave us a note in the comments.


The next episode of Moment of Zen will be an explainer episode and drop tomorrow Saturday, March 4th.

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Moment of Zen Podcast @MOZ_Podcast
This week we're going to do an explainer episode. What do you want to see us go deeper on? What questions do you have for us? Ask us anything.
3:44 PM ∙ Mar 1, 2023
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