Consider two scenes:

In the first, a group of friends meets weekly to discuss philosophy. They challenge each other's ideas, explore edge cases, and occasionally change their minds. The discussion is sometimes heated but always focused on understanding truth.

In the second, a therapy group meets to process trauma. Each person shares their experience, receives validation, and leaves feeling emotionally supported. Nobody questions anyone's perspective – that would defeat the purpose.

Both of these are valuable human activities. But they serve fundamentally different purposes. And we might have a problem if we started confusing one for the other.

I've been thinking about this lately because a lot of discourse seems to have undergone what I view to be a "therapeutic turn." What looks like a podcast filled with debate, analysis and discussion has increasingly become a form of collective emotional processing cosplaying as intellectual discourse.

Israel and Hamas have been engaged in a war for just over a year now, and I've found myself increasingly mystified with the nature of discourse surrounding it, or rather lack thereof.

In short, like in all wars, there are a lot of things happening that superficially seem bad. But war is awful and filled with tragedy and destruction — but often is the case in war that things that superficially seem bad, upon deeper analysis, become in the big picture, justifiable, or necessary, or not ideal but basically understandable. Other times the superficially bad things are just bad and without redemption. However, in the last 14 months, I have encountered almost no good faith analysis or discussion trying to evaluate the relative merits of various aspects of what is going on. I'm not talking about blanket statements like 'Israel evil!' or 'Hamas evil!' but about actually examining specific military and strategic challenges that this unique type of war presents.

In modern times, Western nations fight in very few wars. This makes all new wars somewhat unique and novel, because the technology, context and social mores are always evolving, making the standards and norms of war always needing to evolve in parallel as well. But this isn't just a Western nation engaged in a war, but an incredibly unique war, really without any parallel.

To be specific, you have an advanced Western military engaged in a prolonged war with a non-state actor, with genocidal fanatical intentions, with broad civilian support, in a tiny area of land (without any functioning governance or society) that doesn't permit any escape from the conflict, effectively bordered completely by the opposing party, with no ability for refugees to leave, who have built a subterranean fortress, who do not wear uniforms or otherwise adhere to ANY of the laws of war, with extensive weaponry, with no concern about the wellbeing of its own citizens, with a large number of homes/infrastructure booby-trapped, and an unwillingness to surrender, while maintaining a large supply of hostages.

As I said before, every modern war involving a Western nation will have novel issues, but this war is incredibly unique, leading to a huge number of sui generis issues that seem important that aren't as simple as merely extrapolating from some existing norm, convention or “law” and applying it here.

What I typically encounter are responses like "You're a monster" (directed at both sides), accusations of hypocrisy, fact-checking disputes, attacks on source credibility, appeals to “what else could they do” or dismissive "fuck around and find out" type responses. There is also a fair bit of reference to the laws of war, which is taken to be a decisive argument, but it's quite unhelpful because extrapolating these laws to such a different context isn’t very helpful in terms of moral reasoning, nor does it help us understand the relatively badness of various “war crimes” (all wars involve tons of war crimes, so this framing isn't very illuminating)

This isn't just because certain spaces like r/ssc don't allow culture war topics - go to ANY space, whether it's explicitly pro-Israel, pro-Palestinian, a newspaper, a podcast, a family dinner, where people are invested in these topics and you'll find no actual discourse on the merits of the novel issues at hand. It's all just affirming support or disagreement with a particular side, or arguing about specific facts.

To be clear, there are a number of things happening here which seem quite important, where I truly do not know what is right and wrong and genuinely want to understand.

What I think we're seeing is a failure mode of discourse: when issues touch on matters of identity or have emotional stakes, our discourse mechanisms switch from exploratory or truth-seeking to something more akin to group therapy.

Take Russ Roberts, for example - a name many in this community will recognize. I don't mean to single him out since EVERYONE is guilty of this, but he serves as a relevant example. Since October 7th, his typical response to Israeli discourse has been to point out various awful events of the past and ask rhetorically what else could have been done. He shows no curiosity about any specific issue (is sending a civilian to investigate a potentially booby trapped home acceptable? Russ isn’t interested in such questions). He's produced 13 podcasts dedicated to discussing the war (plus countless other episodes touching on it), yet there hasn't been even a moment of analysis of any of the novel moral issues at hand.

I remember last year being intrigued by the internet podcast/video game streamer named Destiny. He gets into debates with other internet people where they try to "win" vs each other. What stands out to me is all the fans who are so invested in Destiny, following all of his "debates". After each debate, the fans will gloat, or talk about how much so and so won in the debate, and express joy at the outcome. It's like Destiny is a representation of them, and to the extent Destiny wins, it means they win and they feel validated."

And maybe the Destiny fans are just showing us openly what so much of discourse has become. We consume the podcasts, news articles, reddit comments and tweets not to understand, but to win and feel validated.

Has there been any significant studies or insights into the transformation of popular music charts in the last 20-30 years? (EDIT - I should specify I'm referring mostly to western charts).

I'm speaking less of the piracy/financial side (though that is obviously intertwined), and more the cultural shift.

Anecdotally we observe things like:

• The loss of distinct genre's

• loss of true local styles ('seattle grunge scene' / 'bristol trip hop' etc)

• the decrease in legitimate long lasting singer/songwriters

• the charts being dominated by sugary pop and r&b with no signs of change, etc etc. ('Remember somehow Korn was top of the charts in 98??')

I'm fascinated by this and am not convinced that 'music has changed' is purely a snobbish attitude and part of getting older (though some is).

I have no specific question - just looking for any books or insights others have had.

Here's an example. I know that nothing can go faster than the speed of light. But if someone told me to show them the evidence, I'd just have to shrug. My "evidence" is that I've been told on reddit and youtube videos that some smart people looked into it, and those smart people supposedly figured out (via mysterious means to me) that nothing can go faster than light.

I chose the speed of light as a non-partisan example, but you obviously see this a lot in a partisan context. It leads to odd situations, where two people are absolutely convinced of opposing views and try to argue with one another about it but neither actually knows of any evidence or arguments for their side. In extreme cases, people will be shocked that anyone could not agree with their position, given that there is such a mountain of evidence for it (that they just don't happen to remember offhand right now).

This happened to me actually. A prominent person said he wasn't convinced that HIV caused AIDS, and at first I was in disbelief that anyone would say that. Then I realized I know nothing about HIV or AIDS, and I don't even know what percentage of scientists who study it think HIV causes AIDS. I googled it and reassured myself, but it did surprise me that I couldn't give a single argument for something I apparently felt very confident about.

Like many folks, I’m trying out Bluesky and want to follow a few new people who post interesting things. Who are your favorites?

This thread is intended to fill a function similar to that of the Open Threads on SSC proper: a collection of discussion topics, links, and questions too small to merit their own threads. While it is intended for a wide range of conversation, please follow the community guidelines. In particular, avoid culture war–adjacent topics.

Hi, people, what I'm looking for with this thread is to discover new interesting subreddit to follow, because I don't know how to find them, so, care to share some fascinating and interesting subreddit that you know?

One subreddit I think is fascinating is https://www.reddit.com/r/CriticalTheory/

And by “success” I meant an ongoing enjoyment of music.

Not looking to force a discipline here but I wish my parents would have pushed me a little more when I started to express disinterest.

I would love to be thoughtful about introduction, pushing through any inevitable decline of interest, and making it intellectually and creatively engaging.

Here's a comment from a seemingly permanently depressed person

This is so important.

I've been miserable all my life, my first suicide attempt was at 8 years old. I've always wanted nothing more than to die.

Earlier this year I had a terrible infection, resistant to antibiotics. I was put on some crazy strong medications that, without going into the grizzly details, absolutely destroyed my digestive system.

Then, unexpectedly, For 4-5 months after that treatment, I was suddenly...happy?

I'd never been happy before, so I didn't understand what was happening to me, or what to do with all this energy and joy.

I couldn't recognize myself. I could smile, and even laughed!

I found myself in traffic one day, but the sky was blue, there was a cool breeze blowing through the window, there was nice music playing, and I was outside, going places, doing things! And I was SO grateful just to be there, stuck in traffic, alone, on this beautiful day.

During that time I did so many amazing things, learned so many new skills, renovated my home, rebuilt my life, my self, and accomplished so many things I never believed I'd be able to.

Hell, I literally climbed a mountain! More than once! I've hiked over 600kms (372 miles) this year! Elated just to be outside, to feel the sun on my skin and the breeze against my face, the smell of the leaves and the sound of the birds...it all felt brand new.

Unfortunately, it was short-lived, and after about 6 months things have begun to revert.

I kept up with diet, exercise and sleep, I continued with setting goals and achieving them...but ever so slowly, like the setting sun, the darkness, the exhaustion, the misery, has crept back in.

But I'll always be grateful for those 4 months, where for the first time in my 40 odd years of life I learned what happiness was, and how it felt to be capable, independant and in control.

I've been depressed my whole life, and I'm assuming many others are, too. Looks like there are cases where solving gut bacteria would do more for you than any psychotherapy could. And, more generally, if it affects your power level that much, then even beyond clinical depression this should be an area of concern.

What can be done to make your gut bacteria more optimal in this regard?

I work with a lot of therapists. So I get a meta view of mental health trends. One that has been trending the wrong way for about 7-10 years is "true crime" or even ripped from the headlines fake crime SVU style dramas.

Tons of practitioners I work with have seen a dramatic rise in anxiety, anger and depression related to literally watching, reading, or listening to, too much true crime media.

These clients are literally soaking their brain in the worst criminal happenings of the last 100 years for 20 hours a week or more and then wondering why they are having mental health problems. SMH...

Thinking things like furniture/toy manufacturing, niche electronics (speakers, mics, various components), etc.

Question in the title.

Most epileptics can feel a seizure coming on... but I haven't been able to Google anybody who found a way to interrupt that process without medications. Yet I think I have. It has worked on every try! This is confusing and I'd like to understand it better.

I'm not going to reduce or stop my meds! I'm not going to rely on this technique and like drive a car!

I'd just like to know:

• have other epileptics claimed they could do this?
• What pecentage of them actually could?
• If any actually could, how did they describe how they did it?
• What research should I read on this, or at least like what are the right search terms to explore this?

What I do is: I apply the view of consciousness as a property of neural oscillations not brains, that I described in my "Recursive Reflections" guest post. The oncoming seizure is an oscilation obviously, and so is the thought that notices it. I just literally synchronize their frequrncies, shift the rhythm of the noticing one to match the seizure one, and end up with a single oscillation that I can direct back into something resembling my default mode ntwork; instantly I have full control back and I'm rewarded with more vivid conscious phenomena / sensory clarity.

But of course this is exactly what I want to believe, and I guess with my broken brain self-delusion should be assumed extra likely. This too I would like to understand better:

• Do acute seizure auras make epileptics extra prone to delusion?

It seems to me I might be deluding myself, or this might be normal/known and I just suck at Google, or I might have found something worth sharing...

This notion came to me recently, and I wanted to put it to this group as well.

I'm sure many of you are already familiar with Bostrom's thought experiment involving an AGI with a singular, banal goal: the maximisation of paperclip production. The crux of the argument is that, if the AI’s goals are not properly “aligned” with human interests, it could end up optimising its task so strictly that it consumes every resource in the universe, even human atoms, to increase paperclip output.

Now, let's consider an adjustment to this scenario. I don't call myself a "utilitarian", but suppose we adopted the position of one. What if, instead of producing paperclips, we design an AI whose mission is to maximise the total utility experienced by sentient beings? It’s more ambitious, but comes with intriguing implications.

My theory is that, in this scenario, the AI would have a radical objective: the creation and optimisation of sentient brains, specifically "brains in vats," that are designed to experience the greatest possible utility. The key word here is utility, and the AI’s job would be to ensure that it’s not just creating these brains, but shaping them in such a way that the sum of brains it creates and maintains causes energy and matter to be maximised to produce the highest possible net utility.

The AI would need to determine with ruthless efficiency how to structure these brains. Efficiency here means calculating the minimal resource cost required to generate and maintain these brains while maximising their capacity to experience utility. It's quite likely that the most effective brain for this purpose would not be a human or animal brain given these brains are resource-heavy, requiring vast amounts of energy to fuel their complex emotional systems and such. The brains the AI develops would be something far more streamlined, capable of high utility without the inefficient emotional baggage. They would likely also be perfectly suited for easy and compact storage.

The AI would need to maximise the use of all matter and energy in existence to construct and sustain these brains. It would optimise the available resources to ensure that this utility-maximising system of brains runs as efficiently as possible. Once it has performed these calculations, then, and only then, would it begin its objective in earnest.

Strangely something about this thought experiment has made me question why I even consider utility or sentience important (although, as I say at the outset, I wouldn't necessarily call myself a utilitarian). I'm not sure why.

Is Ambivalence killing parenthood?

I'm sorry if this isn't up to the usual standards for this sub. I'm a longtime follower here, but not a usual poster.

Most of the time, we hear the arguments for and against having children framed as an economic decision. "The price of housing is too high," or "People feel they'll have to give up too much if they have kids."

Anastasia Berg found this explanation wanting, and interviewed Millennials to figure out why they're really not having children. What she found is that the economic discussion isn't quite an accurate frame. It's more about delaying even the decision on whether or not to have kids until certain life milestones are met, milestones that have become more difficult to meet due to inflating standards and caution. She also found that having children is seen as the end of a woman's personal story, not a part of it. Naturally, women are hesitant to end an arc of their lives they enjoy and have invested a lot of effort into.

I love the compassion in this article. To have children is to make yourself vulnerable. And if we believe this article, people are so scared of getting something wrong that they are delaying even the choice to decide whether or not to have children until they feel they have gotten their lives sufficiently under control. They need an impossible standard of readiness in terms of job, partner, and living situation.

I wonder how we could give people more confidence? To see children are part of a process of building a life, and not the end of it? Caution is not a bad thing. How can we encourage a healthy balance between caution and commitment in partner selection? To feel more confident in having children a little earlier? Or even to give them a framework in order to plan their lives?

The hipsters aren’t wrong: most musicians really were better when they were younger, especially on their first album.

There’s a simple, boring statistical truth behind this. Most musicians and bands can only produce one or two truly great albums. Why? The hardest part of becoming a successful musician is the discovery process. To get discovered, a musician or band needs to create something that really connects—often a combination of luck, timing, and the right sound. After this initial success, or when that sound wears off, they tend to regress to the mean. Additionally, artists often spend years pouring their energy into crafting their debut album, refining ideas and perfecting songs. Once it’s released, though, the well often runs dry. Without a backlog of equally great ideas, sustaining that level of brilliance becomes nearly impossible. And once they’re popular, they suddenly face new challenges: less time to digest art, the pressure to replicate success, and often a growing aversion to taking creative risks.

That said, there are exceptions—songwriters who seem divinely inspired, like Paul McCartney and Bob Dylan, who manage to produce hit after hit, crossing genres and decades. But even they eventually lose their magic. Suddenly, they just can’t write a good song anymore.

Take Paul McCartney, for example. I love him; I think he might be one of the most uniquely talented humans to have ever lived. But it’s true—he is no longer capable of writing great songs. This isn’t because he’s uninterested or chasing new styles. He simply lost the ability. It happens to the best. Even McCartney.

Bob Dylan explained this phenomenon himself in an interview:

INTERVIEWER: Do you ever look back at your old music and think, "Whoa, that surprised me"?

BOB DYLAN: Uh, I used to. I don’t do that anymore. I don’t know how I got to write those songs.

INTERVIEWER: What do you mean you don’t know how?

BOB DYLAN: All those early songs are like almost magically written. “Darkness at the break of noon / Shadows even the silver spoon / The handmade blade, the child’s balloon.” Well, try to sit down and write something like that. There’s a magic to that. And it’s not a Siegfried-and-Roy kind of magic, you know. It’s a different kind of penetrating magic. And I did it at one time.

INTERVIEWER: You don’t think you can do it today?

BOB DYLAN: Uh-uh [no].

INTERVIEWER: Does that disappoint you?

BOB DYLAN: Well, you can’t do something forever. I did it once, and I can do other things now. But I can’t do that.

I’ve been reflecting on this since seeing one of my favorite songwriters in concert last night: Ryan Adams. I believe Ryan Adams is, by far, the best songwriter of my lifetime. Over more than 20 years, he’s written 50+ certified bangers, consistently. But since 2017, he hasn’t released anything that qualifies as a certified banger. It’s worth noting that during this period, Ryan faced serious challenges—being MeToo’d, widespread backlash, and struggles with addiction and sobriety. But seven years without a new great song is significant. I suspect his streak is over; he may no longer be able to write great songs.

This got me thinking about why this happens. Unlike athletes, songwriters don’t lose their ability because of physical decline. It’s not about running out of trends to explore either; many of these artists couldn’t replicate their old style even if they tried. And for most intellectuals and high-performing knowledge workers, their peak can extend well into their 50s and beyond. So why do so many musicians lose their creative spark?

Is it genetic? Something inherently artistic? I sincerely don’t know. My best guess is still what Bob Dylan said: he was temporarily blessed with magic.

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. You could post:

• Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

• Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

• Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

• Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

Scott’s Meditations on Moloch inspired me to explore how language—humanity’s greatest tool—might also be our most powerful asset in escaping Moloch’s traps. I’ve written a short, five-minute piece aimed at making these ideas more accessible to a broader audience. I’d love feedback from this community before sharing it more widely:

Naming our greatest enemy - Google Docs

Thank you to Scott and everyone here for fostering such thought-provoking discussions!