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I mean, we actually know that not only was there pitifully little scientific advancement during that period (especially as you point out in the first half), but that science and te…

The Enlightenment is a direct consequence of the Protestant Reformation that preceded it a few centuries prior. The key ideas of Protestantism was that faith should be a) based on …

I'm very curious to hear more. Contrary to this article, I don't see any evidence of "pro-torture propaganda", because everyone in this thread and almost every source I find is ant…

Having spent far too much time lately reading politics discussion online, your comment made me smile. Enough pointless tribalism, back to producing...

You summoned me with your comment above so I feel compelled to respond to this interesting comment. I agree that there are many interesting developments in political philosophy on …

Personal thoughts (trying to channel pg with a huge stack of applications to get through - I imagine the guy who first applied Naive Bayes to email spam being quite comfortable mak…

Wow, you're like the anti-me. People (with a few exceptions, usually the result of excellent breeding, education or culture) are much weaker and worse than that. It's important not…

Make a new account, set up a voting ring (a proper voting ring this time, where the accounts have some history - ask your HN-using friends to help out). You only need about 4 upvot…

The founders were smart guys and the Constitution is a clever piece of political engineering, but you might as well be saying that the government is doing badly because they stoppe…

Yes, you're right that they're officially a democracy. Government control of the media ensures that the same party will remain in power. I think Japan and Taiwan had the same party…

Yours is the standard post-cynical view of democracy. It's common among very smart people. Think Churchill's "two cheers for democracy". It's what I used to believe. I don't now. "…

Yes. Here's something interesting: various Chinese think tanks wonder publicly about if, and when their country will transition to democracy. (Yes, they can get away with this - th…

You misunderstand my argument. Obviously Jesus says that you should do good. Apparently that was a big part of his shtick. But if you want to actually do good you need to have a pr…

Thank you - this is the most sensible comment I've seen in this thread. Many thinkers throughout history have noted that states and criminal gangs are effectively the same. They ar…

Yes, I was going to say the same thing. If you found this article interesting, you'll likely find Moldbug's perspective very interesting too.

It's funny, I actually agree 100% with the author on skpeticism being blind to the fact that we only understand reality via mental models (all models are wrong, but some are useful…

Post-script: Two of my favourite bloggers describe the same conflict between society's elites. Mencius Moldbug describes them as Optimates and Brahmins. Michael o'Church describes …

Thanks for posting this. The most obvious point (to me) is that it would be very hard to install a 1984-style regime in a nation where almost every educated person has read 1984 . …