Sam Bentley's Good News YouTube channel
Here is his Good News in 2024 compilation
I definitely don't agree that all the concerns mentioned are real problems, or that some of the "good news" is actually "good," but this channel is a counter to the Cult of Doom.
SKIP the below. Instead, check out Hannah Ritchie's latest about food production. (Don't read the comments.)
Also, the latest Freakonomics could literally save your life. tl;dr - wrongly thinking you are allergic to penicillin can lead to a lot of unnecessary suffering and death. Who knew?
We interrupt my attempts to be more positive for a bit of venting:
Our hero Sam Harris has a new, long Substack post (won't link to) bemoaning that fire hit his very rich neighborhood. He uses his platform to call on billionaires to give away their money to rebuild his wealthy neighborhood.
Note: This multi-multi-millionaire did not and is not calling on billionaires to give away their money to the poor, nor to the disease-stricken, nor to those who have actually lost everything. No; only after his daughter's school partly burned did Sam call on billionaires to give away their money.
[I also found this commentary on Sam's post to be spot-on:
His claim that "If what someone's done to accumulate wealth isn't illegal we shouldn't be mad about it" is so mind-numbingly stupid that I had to stop and make sure I hadn't misread it. ... "We shouldn't resent the uber wealthy for dodging taxes that pay for things like public infrastructure and disaster relief. However, they should be nice and donate their money for disaster relief and public infrastructure where I live."
The Sam Harris of 1930: "Sure we know they built their fortunes off of child labor in factories in mines, but that's legal and everything that's legal is okay (and everything that's illegal is bad!) so we can't get mad at them for having money. Don't get mad at rich people, that makes me sad!"]
In Sam's honor, here are some relevant past posts:
From 2018:
In the latest "Ask Me Anything," Sam was asked about the person who wanted to change his age from 69 to 49. In his answer, Sam compared him to the white con-woman who posed as black, and then to trans people. He concluded that we don't allow people to change their age merely because not enough people are "clamoring to do so."
Once again, Sam's lack of empathy and insight is astounding. This person wants to change his age to benefit himself. No one comes out as trans to benefit themselves. 2018 has had the most murders of trans people in the United States ever, and a similar rise in the rate of violence against trans individuals. This is not to mention what many trans people go through with family and in the workplace.
Hey Sam -- how many people are beaten to death for turning a certain age?
That Sam could even consider for a second that there is some equivalence between "feeling younger" and being trans -- let alone go on the record saying so -- is, to my mind, extraordinarily damning of Sam as a "thinker."
...
And again, in the AMA Sam claimed it was important that we see how unfairly celebrities have been treated by #MeToo, because "They are the canary in the coal mine." But what was his example of the great injustice? That people were mean to Matt Damon on Twitter.
It would appear that Sam's algorithm is simple: How will issue X affect well-off straight white men? More and more, it seems to me that is Sam's only concern in the world. He's become a new Jordan Peterson, just telling straight white men what they want to hear. How else can you possibly explain his contention that cross-burning darling of the KKK Charles Murray is "the most unfairly maligned person in my lifetime. That doesn’t really run the risk of being much of an exaggeration there."
PS: Another white guy pines for a time when only white guys had power.
Also from 2018:
Excerpts from Ezra Klein's interview with Sam Harris:
Sam: I’m in the, once again, having the bewildering experience of agreeing with virtually everything you said there, and yet it has basically no relevance to what I view as our underlying disagreement.
Ezra: You have that bewildering experience because you don’t realize when you keep saying that everybody else is thinking tribally, but you’re not, that that is our disagreement.
Sam: Well, no, because I know I’m not thinking tribally ... It’s not tribalism. This is an experience of talking about ideas in public. ... That is not identity politics. That is my experience as a public intellectual trying to talk about ideas.
Ezra: That is what folks from the dominant group get to do. They get to say, my thing isn’t identity politics, only yours is. I will tell you, Sam, when people who do not look like you hear you telling them that this is just identity politics, they don’t think, “God he’s right. That is just identity politics.” They think this is my experience and you don’t understand it. You just said it’s your experience and they don’t understand it.
Shorter Sam Harris: The only people who are being honest are me -- a well-off white guy -- and those who agree with me. Everyone else who doesn't agree is lying about "the data" and just playing politically-correct identity politics.
And what is the tragedy here? What is the worst thing that deserves our attention and must be addressed? Hundreds of years of racial oppression and violence? Unarmed people being shot? Study after study showing continued racial discrimination?
No. It is a very rich, very famous, very influential white cross-burning guy being disliked by some people on the left. Again, Sam Harris:
I hadn’t paid attention to [Charles] Murray. When I did read the book and did some more research on him, I came to think that he was probably the most unfairly maligned person in my lifetime. That doesn’t really run the risk of being much of an exaggeration there.
Wow.
From 2019:
There are some people, like Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro, who I think very actively cause more suffering in the world (and, sadly, are enabled by lots of "reasonable" people who care more about congeniality than consequences).
However, Sam Harris just makes me sad. I still start [again: 2019] many of his podcasts because he has interesting people (for example Andrew McAfee). But I was dismayed to hear that not only does he add a preface to his interviews, Harris has now added a postscript to make it more about him -- and to attack his guests when they aren't able to reply. This continues to undermine his contention that "conversation" [sic] is the most important tool we have (a belief I don't share).
What is much worse, however, is Harris' incredible close-mindedness. He is utterly convinced that he has all truth. He contends that any other perspective isn't just wrong but also the root of everything bad (i.e., Hillary lost by refusing to condemn Islam as Sam does). His sneering and thoughtless denigrations of "The Left," "identity politics," and anyone who is "woke" are so childish that I am continually amazed that no one Sam respects will point that out to him. But it seems as though there are fewer and fewer people he respects. Anyone who has a different point of view is quickly dismissed out of hand. If you don't have Sam's well-off straight white male perspective, you need to "get over it." ...
I believe that Sam is right about free will -- that is, that everything that happens is just physics (chemistry, biology). I understand that Sam can't do any differently than his clueless arrogance. Worshipful echo chambers are powerful drugs. So I really should just "get over it" and not let it bother me. But at least as of today, it still does.
<unnecessary>One thing I learned when writing Losing My Religions is that I'm not a very original thinker. For example, Yuval Noah Harari wrote about the Simulation Hypothesis a few months before I published the precursor to my chapter "Worst Than Hitler." <ego>The only unique idea (as far as I've been able to find) I have in the book is "Biting the Philosophical Bullet" (and the related "My Expected Value Is Bigger Than Yours"). ("The End of Veganism" is certainly not a common idea, although The Animalist has covered it too.)</ego>
There are a lot of interesting and insightful ideas out there on the intertubes. Trying to find them and bring them to you is one of the reasons I write this blog. This is important, IMO, because many good ideas are buried in an ocean of verbiage and highfalutin language. Someone who investigated Effective Altruism noted that it would take 80,000 hours to read what EAs have already written, let alone what will be written in the next week.</unnecessary>
Once we have learned our lessons from the past, there is no reason to wrack ourselves with guilt. All we need to do, in any given moment, is look upon the actions available to us, consider, and take whichever one seems most likely to lead to a future full of light.
I hang out around a lot of effective altruists. Many of them are motivated primarily by something like guilt (for having great resources and opportunity while others suffer) or shame (for not helping enough). Hell, many of my non-EA friends are primarily motivated by guilt or shame.
I worry that guilt and shame are unhealthy long-term motivators. [Why the vast majority of people who go vegan quit.] In many of my friends, guilt and shame tend to induce akrasia [procrastination / indecision], reduce productivity, and drain motivation.
[Goes on to say we should work so that the outcome is good enough - to the point of decreasing utility: "Half-ass everything, with everything you've got."]
Over and over, I see people set themselves a target, miss it by a little, and then throw all restraint to the wind. "Well," they seem to think, "willpower has failed me; I might as well over-indulge." I call this pattern "failing with abandon." [Many former vegans.]
But you don't have to fail with abandon. When you miss your targets, you're allowed to say "dang!" and then continue trying to get as close to your target as you can.
...[T]he subject thinks there's something they should be doing, and they're not doing it, and so they feel really guilty.
I claim that the word "should" is causing damage here.
In fact, as far as I can tell, the way that most people use the word "should," most of the time, is harmful. People seem to use it to put themselves in direct and unnecessary conflict with themselves.
If you often suffer from guilt, then I strongly suggest cashing out your shoulds. Get a tally counter and start training yourself to notice [mindfulness] when you say the word "should."[N]ever let a "should" feel like a reason to do something. Only do things because they seem like the best thing to do after you've thought about it; never do things just because you "should."[E]ven among people who claim to be moral relativists: they protest that if they weigh their wants and their shoulds on the same scales, then they might make the wrong choice.But this notion of "right" vs "wrong" cannot come from outside. There is no stone tablet among the stars that mandates what is right. Moral relativists usually have no trouble remembering that their narrow, short-term desires (for comfort, pleasure, etc.) are internal, but many seem to forget that their wide, long-term desires (flourishing, less suffering, etc.) are also part of them.
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| San Diego (this particular rock is no longer standing) |
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| Cut from book |
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| Taken from our street. |
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| Taken from CVS parking lot |
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| Santa Fe |
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| Saguaro flowers |
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| Saguaro with an arm on an arm on an arm. This one died years ago. |
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| Yosemite Valley |
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| Yosemite Falls (and below) |
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| Yellowstone Falls |
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| Riparian area, Sabino Canyon |
tl;dr: Going to try to make the blog more upbeat, mindful, and useful going forward. But not this day. 😜
Being right is unimportant.
Three observations from the intertubes:
1. Patron-supported content is not necessarily better than ad-supported content. Anything related to opinion (politics, culture, environmentalism, veganism, conspiracy theories, etc.) is driven by the need to be loved. You have to flatter egos enough to prompt people to give you money. "Everyone who isn't vegan like you is an idiotic, hypocritical moral monster!"
This doesn't apply to things like Universe Today or even First Phil Whisky.
2. Related to supporter-capture / loudest-voice: I came across a Substacker who basically writes "Everyone who isn't vegan like you is an idiotic, hypocritical moral monster!" over and over and over again. I asked him (and it is pretty safe to assume it is a him) if he thought his posts are effective at convincing anyone who isn't already vegan. No answer.
I came across this person via a link from psychologist Paul Bloom, who linked to a "Liberals who aren't vegan are hypocrites" post. Dr. Bloom's comment was, basically, "Hate to break it to you, but we are all hypocrites."
3. Related: within-community amplification of negativity makes that community incredibly unattractive to others. <coughveganismcough>
Example: Christmas Eve here in Tucson was just about perfect, weather-wise -- sunny, little wind, upper-70s. The Tucson subreddit was filled with wailing and rending of clothes. "This isn't normal!"
So?
More people should die from cold?
You know what else isn't "normal"? Antibiotics. Indoor plumbing. Contraception. Surviving childbirth most of the time. Etc.
Regardless of "normal," nice weather is nice weather. It really shouldn't be hard to see how repulsive it is to be bitching over a beautiful day.
Can you find a cloud in every silver lining? Sure. But why? Being happy is inherently better than being "right;" better to be a fool satisfied than Socrates dissatisfied.
More importantly, though, being happy is the way to attract people to ideas that can make the world even better.
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“I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.”
-attributed to Isaac Newton, offered in the context of Bitcoin
Actual advice from here:
1. Experiences shape your perception of risk.
2. Intelligence doesn’t guarantee investment success. Warren Buffett once wrote, “Investing is not a game where the guy with the 160 IQ beats the guy with the 130 IQ. Once you have ordinary intelligence, what you need is the temperament to control the urges that get other people into trouble in investing.”
I’ve met so many highly educated individuals who are terrible investors. They can’t control their emotions because their academic pedigree makes them overconfident in their abilities.
3. No one lives life in the long-term. Long-term returns are the only ones that matter but you have to survive a series of short-terms to get there.
Emotional intelligence is the true sign of investment smarts.
9. The biggest risks are always the same…yet different. The next risk is rarely the same as the last risk because every market environment is different.
On the other hand, the biggest mistakes investors make are often the same — timing the market, recency bias, being fearful when others are fearful and greedy when others are greedy and investing in the latest fads.
10. The market doesn’t care how clever you are. Trying harder doesn’t guarantee more profits.
12. Overthinking can be just as debilitating as not thinking at all. Investing involves irreducible uncertainty about the future.
18. There is a big difference between rich and wealthy. Lots of rich people are miserable. These people are not wealthy, regardless of how much money they have.
Bonus from here:
When I started investing in 1987, grumpy old men would regularly warn that the market was overvalued and that stock investors would soon receive the punishment they so richly deserved. These market “wisemen” would point out that shares were richly valued based on yardsticks like price-to-book value, dividend yield and price-to-earnings multiples.
And yet, as the years rolled by, stocks kept getting more and more expensive, and those who listened to the grumpy old men were the ones who got punished. It eventually dawned on me that investors couldn’t divine the market’s future by studying valuation measures, and today I pay them scant attention.
Good news you probably didn't see: Andrew McAfee's post from Natalia's birthday. Excerpt: "Sea turtles are well outside the normal purview of this blog, so, why am I bringing them up? To spread holiday cheer with the news that their numbers are skyrocketing around the world's oceans."
Regarding Emptiness and Freedom, a reader writes:
Once I accepted determinism, I became more at peace. I stopped hating people and started hating beliefs. I became pretty agnostic in terms of “moral judgement” altogether. We are who we are – we should just try and increase the chances of everyone acting in ways that are ethical.
Well said!
At least at the moment, my greatest mindfulness challenge remains guys who trick out their cars to be maximally loud. My immediate reaction is still pretty negative.
I rationally know how hard it must be to be (relatively) alone and below-average intelligence in this world. Combine that with being full of testosterone / aggression / anger / resentment, it must be horrible. As hard as it is, I do feel sympathy for them, which tempers and shortens my anger.
This Year (on Colbert) (Somewhat slower, less frenetic version)
I miss Colbert. But that's part of getting through the year.
tl;dr In 2025, One Step for Animals will no longer receive our largest single annual contribution. The good news is that donation matching is still in effect. Please contribute if you can.
Please share with anyone who believes in animal-first advocacy. Thanks.
++++++
In the 25 years before One Step, I studied fundraising extensively. I was in communications for two eight-figure organizations. During those tenures, I worked closely with "development" teams (fundraisers, details in the postscript.)
Every group used a "matching" contribution to drive donations. I won't get into the details - you know the drill - but the organization always received the "matching" money.
Except at One Step. One Step receives the matching funds only if the goals are met:
So please donate to One Step's work.
*Well, maybe. Yeah ... definitely maybe, relatively speaking.
PS from 2023:
The Best Thing Since Almost Dying
Like every political party and candidate, charities have teams dedicated to “development” – which means “figuring out what potential donors want to hear and then telling them that over and over” (and wherever possible, have the message given by attractive young blond women**).
There is also a “communications” team to “build relationships with” (read: “suck up to” / “feed the ego of”) members of the media. The more nice things said by “third parties,” the more the nonprofit is “validated,” and thus an easier sell to donors and other funders. (“Other people like us – you should too!”)
Comms teams are also dedicated to building a “social media presence” – getting the most likes and clicks, again to show donors just how “popular” the charity is.
For nearly all of my adult life, I have tried to get people to “like” me and whatever organization I was working for at the time. How many views, how many opens, how many likes, how many mentions ... all to serve the ultimate question of how many dollars we could fundraise … so we could then have bigger development and communications teams! WOO!
Two great things have happened since I was fired in 2021 following my fractured neck and had facial reconstruction. Probably the best is that I no longer spend hours every single day desperately trying to figure out how to get people to like me / my group.
OMG, being freed from this is so fantastic. I honestly had no idea how stressful it had been, nor how great it is to not be constantly viewing everyone as potential profit / seeking external validation. I just can't tell you how great it is. Praise Jebus!
** DUBNER: Give me a sense of how big this beauty effect is. So, let’s say one solicitor is ranked a 9 out of 10 by unbiased or disinterested parties and one is ranked a six. How much more does the nine raise than the six?
LIST: Right, you’re looking at roughly a 100 percent increase when you look at going from a six to a nine.
DUBNER: Oh my goodness. And what about hair color?
LIST: So, hair color ends up being important as well. And it turns out that blondes certainly have more fund raising more money. You just can’t beat a beautiful blonde who’s going door to door to raise money for your cause.
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| White Sands National Park |
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| Maggie and sunflowers |
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| Multnomah Falls, Oregon |
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| NCAR in front of Boulder's Flatirons |
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| Visitor's Center, White Sands |
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| Ronald's Donuts, Las Vegas |
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| Georgia O'Keefe |
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| Oregon Coast |
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| Peter Singer (cut from book) |
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| Superbloom in Tucson |
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| Hanging garden, Prague |
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| Rathaus, Würzburg, Germany |
