r/modernwisdom

Went back through this one because I lost count of how many books got name checked. Carr reads a lot more than the panel show thing lets on.

The one that stuck with me was the Philogelos, which is a Greek joke collection from somewhere around the fourth century. Carr's example is a guy in the barber's chair. Barber asks how he wants his hair cut. He says in silence. Carr reckoned the book was four thousand years old and it is closer to seventeen hundred, but the joke still lands, which was sort of his whole point.

The mental health thread, which is really what the episode is about:

• Capitalist Realism, Mark Fisher. Carr used it for the privatisation of anxiety. The idea that we have taken a societal problem and turned it into a personal failing. This is the spine of the whole conversation.
• The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle. He tells the park bench story. Tolle at his lowest thinking I cannot live with myself, and then stopping dead on it. Who is I and who is myself.

Where it gets bleaker:

• End Times, Peter Turchin. Two things sink a society. Wealth inequality, and what Turchin calls the overproduction of elites. Carr's addition was that social media supercharges the first one because now everyone can see everything all the time.
• Brave New World Revisited, Huxley. Nobody takes our freedom off us, we hand it over for cheap dopamine. Soma with a better delivery mechanism.

Thinking and brains:

• The Master and His Emissary, Iain McGilchrist. Carr's line was that the left brain apprehends and the right brain comprehends, and AI is enormously good at the first one. It can do complicated. It cannot do complex.
• Thinking, Fast and Slow. He uses it to explain joke structure as first and second order thinking. The setup is the fast one, the punchline forces you into the slow one. Worth saying he could not retrieve Kahneman's name and confidently said cardamom instead. Twice.

Money and time:

• The Psychology of Money, Morgan Housel. Expectation inflation rather than currency inflation. Housel's line that the other name for expectation inflation is progress.
• Die With Zero, Bill Perkins. This one is Chris rather than Jimmy. He said reading it and then getting Perkins on the show were two different levels of learning the same lesson.
• What We Owe The Future, William MacAskill. Longtermism, came up near the end.

Ten books in two hours, which is fairly standard for him

Daily Mail article behind a paywall. What is this about anyone?