We Are What We Take In

None of the below is meant to badmouth anyone. I want you to be happy. It is the first step to making the world a better place.

First, some news you probably won't read elsewhere:

• Amazon deforestation at 40-year low
• The number of honey bee colonies was 102 million in 2024, a 47% increase since 1990. (Good luck finding that amidst all the Doom headlines.)
• New soybean to store carbon and withstand drought

(Speaking of carbon, of course the direct social benefit of carbon is many, many fewer people starving.* That's ignoring all the development and unimaginable wealth made possible by fossil fuels.**)

To our main story:

The mind is fragile. It isn't just others. 

I recently listened to a podcast with a very smart person who has been deranged by climate change. They doubt their grandchildren (born to upper-class parents in one of the world's richest countries) will have a better life than they did. 

From any factual standpoint, this is deranged. The life expectancy of someone born in 1946 was ~45 years old. Today it is ~77 years old. 

Hard to have a better quality of life when you die over three decades earlier.

And, of course, many of the advances that make us infinitely wealthy are widely available to billions today. (Addition: Check out the stats here.***)

As even climate-pilled Ezra Klein has written:

“No mainstream climate models suggest a return to a world as bad as the one we had in 1950, to say nothing of 1150.” (Quoted in Losing, p. 448 of the pdf.)

But it isn't just this climate doomer. We are, each and every one of us, shaped by what we take in. 

If we read Vegans all day long, we're convinced every problem, from war to hair loss, would be solved by Veganism. (Ask me how I know.) If you read antivaxxers all day, that's what you'll believe. If we read resentful individuals all day long, we become resentful. Flat-earthers, AI doom, climate doom, capitalism doom, population doom, alien doom, Xtian End-time doom -- we are what we take in.

Not one of us is immune. I am not immune. You are not immune. 

Don't count on your willpower. Don't count on your intelligence. Don't count on your rationality. It won't work.

If you want to be happy and able to focus and make a real difference, you need to set up systems. And the first step is to to get offline. Stop reading algorithmic feeds. Stop reading the news. Stop reading comments. 

And then remove your ability to take "just a taste." There is no "safe" level of Facebook or Twitter. Negativity on the internet is heroin. It is the true opioid of the masses.  

Footnotes

**Just one graph.

*An inconvenient truth: CO2 is greening the Earth. 

Why can't we set a realistic "social cost of carbon"? Because it isn't clear that there is a net social cost of carbon! That "CO2 is greening the Earth" link is fuller exploration of this point from Carbon Cult Cruelty:

Over a decade ago, I came across a sentence buried in a New Scientist article noting that increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide have increased crop yields. Asking ChatGPT today to summarize the research on crop yields and increased carbon dioxide concentrations produced this table:

📊 Summary of Average Yield Increases Under Elevated CO₂ (~550 ppm)

Wheat 10–15% 

Rice 10–15%

Soybeans 15–20% 

Maize 0–5%

Now, a serious question for you:

Did you know that our most important crops were more productive because of increased carbon dioxide concentrations?

Another serious question:

Why do you think that fact isn’t known?  

***by Dan Steinhart

By July, a worker in 1870 had already put in all the hours you'll work this year.

We measure progress in dollars. The biggest gift may have been time.

Work

In 1870, workers in most rich countries put in more than 3,000 hours a year, 60 to 70 hours a week for 50 weeks. Today it's roughly half. In Germany, it fell from 3,284 hours in 1870 to 1,354 by 2017.

Home

In 1900 the average American household spent 58 hours a week cooking, cleaning and doing laundry. 98% of households washed clothes on a scrub board, and in 1890, 90% of American women baked their own bread.

By 1975 housework was down to 18 hours a week. Today a two-person household spends under 8.

Childhood

In 1900, 18% of American kids aged 10 to 15 had jobs. That's 1.75 million children.

Old age

In 1880, 78% of American men over 65 were still working. By 1990 fewer than 20% were. According to economist Dora Costa, a 20-year-old man in 1880 could expect to spend just over two years of his life retired.

Life

An American born in 1900 could expect to live 47 years. Today it's 79.

Our great-grandparents spent their time at the scrub board, on the factory floor and in the fields.

What are you doing with yours? 

Yellowstone. Not Scary. (Well, maybe a little, if you think about it.)

Also: A New Ice Age Was Beginning. Then Humans Started Burning Fossil Fuels 

As always, click on any for larger version.

Too, Too Funny (short video)

It's a cat in a bas(ket)

This video is just too good (below). Would love to play this in a church. H/T Dan. (And this is funny, too; note - AI, and on twitter.) 

Not important: BTW, in my new revisions of Losing My Religions, there are chapters I don't want to re-read. I'm having Q (ChatGPT) review each of those chapters for typos and errors, and give me five suggestions for improvements. Not every one is stellar, but some are really good. And fyi, this updated pdf (viewed in color) is how I intend the book to look. 

“I only want candy!” (2/2)

 
Speaking of smart people, Anne and I recently heard a very smart person rant against AI: “I want all the medical advances, and I want to automate all the drudgery parts of work….” But he wants to “pause” AI – no “job losses,” no “slop,” no “environmental impacts,” no “exacerbating inequality.”

And everyone gets an “unspoiled” world, infinite wealth with no inflation, sex-on-demand with a super model, and a unicorn who shits diamonds. 

Of course, the AI “pause” would, by his own notes, lead to more drudgery, sickness, and premature death*. But only for others. 

Those who already have everything almost never truly worry about those who don’t.

Historically, those on top always complain about and catastrophize literally every single thing that could change the situation: ice, the telegraph, machines / robots, artificial intelligence (starting in 1863, picking up steam in 1959), nuclear power, genetic engineering, computers, the Walkman, the internet, etc.  

They always couch their opposition to progress for others in apocalyptic terms like “threat to humanity” or even “the future of life in the universe.” And they are always 100% sure that their concern is the real deal. 

Locking in their status just happen to have god-level importance.

Wealthy well-off white whiners are the most immoral folk on the planet. Their active hostility to progress for those suffering is utterly repulsive. (Just one example.)

Being a self-centered, self-important whiner isn’t a meaningful life.

A meaningful life actually care about actually improving the actual lives of actual suffering individuals. There are more than you can imagine.

• Noah Smith: Lifting humanity out of poverty is Job #1.
• Michael Lewis: If you are successful, you are lucky, and you owe a debt to the unlucky.

* From here:

I recently spoke with mathematician Steven Strogatz about mathematicians being indignant, even moved to tears, by how many problems OpenAI seemingly solved in ways that threatened entire fields of research. But Strogatz also told me about MIT computer scientist Regina Barzilay, who survived breast cancer and later helped train AI on hundreds of thousands of mammograms to predict breast cancer years in advance.

Strogatz asked Barzilay, “Do you understand what your AI is doing?” She said, “No.” He asked, “Doesn’t it worry you that you don’t understand your own invention?” And she said, “Why would we limit a life-saving model to what humans can understand?” I’m sympathetic to the mathematicians’ tears. [!] But if an incomprehensible model can save my life, I don’t care that scientists don’t understand its inner mechanics. 

Note from Q: Barzilay's team's Mirai model was validated using mammograms from seven hospitals across five countries, with promising results. But a 2026 study found that although Mirai discriminated between higher- and lower-risk patients better than conventional models, it also overestimated certain cancer risks. Source.

Kinda another example of this.

“Smart” People Are Terrible (1/2)

I don't see this as red, but Anne assures me it is bright.

Many people have attacked my position on eradicating malaria-carrying mosquitoes. (Not just me: George Monbiot; Nate Crosser; Works in Progress). My fav was “There are smart people who say we shouldn’t do it!”

Yikes.

Almost every “smart” person in history believed in some god. They did things - like burning “witches” – in the name of their god.  

99.9% of “smart” people believe there is some causeless cause in their brain, overriding the laws of physics. 

One of the very smartest people in US history owned other human beings and fathered children with at least one of his slaves – children he kept in slavery! 

The vast majority of “smart” people espoused the Population Bomb’s horrific cruelty – even for decades after it had been shown to be wrong.  

The vast majority of “smart” people today promote the horrific cruelty of the carbon cult.  

The smarter we are, the more likely we are to believe fake news and conspiracy theories. The smarter we are, the less likely we are to recognize our limitations. 

Being intelligent doesn’t make us more interested in discovering the truth. It just makes us better at rationalizing what we want to believe. 

Don’t be a “smart” person. Don’t defer to “smart” people. Be a thoughtful, questioning person who takes suffering seriously. 

I hope you never have to learn this first hand, but at this moment in time, real, actionable, serious suffering is the heart of what matters.  

Pinker on AI, uncertainty, trade-offs

If you'd like to review the new pdf of Losing My Religions, please contact me or click here. TY!

This whole thing (video or transcript) is great. Pinker is a very well-read, highly-informed, broadly-respected, non-dogmatic scientist, not some blogging mathlete out for clicks. Anne* and I cheered while listening to this. I wanted to kiss* Pinker by the end.

tl;dr: Don’t impose serious, known, concrete suffering (on individuals who have a clear ability to suffer) just so you can supposedly hedge against future entirely speculative suffering in hypothetical entities whose mere sentience (let alone capacity for serious suffering) is wildly uncertain.

History shows we should actually help those suffering (#1 below and here) rather than wring our hands and whine about imaginary doom. 

Two comments:

1. Pinker says we should wipe out mosquitoes that carry malaria. To humans, those specific species of mosquitoes are the deadliest creatures in the world - even deadlier than other humans. It still amazes me that so many people squeal at the very mention of eradicating malaria! The pro-malaria crowd are all rich, healthy individuals not in danger of suffering from malaria. 

2. Pinker admits to having changed his mind. Imagine that! I have changed my mind, too (a key point of Losing My Religions). For example, I've changed my mind about LLMs. The ethical evidence is actually in their favor. As is the cultural evidence.

*Happy 34th Anniversary to the greatest collection of atoms that ever existed! 🩷

Another Brain Breaks

Sunset Crater National Monument.

In “Our Future Robot Overlords Are Better,” about an organization supposedly dedicated to suffering, I wrote:

They claim to be about reducing severe suffering, but instead of actually helping, this group just plays the expected value game. (“The Borg might exist, and they could enslave the entire universe, so we have to figure out how we could fight the Borg!”*) ...

*Don't tell them about the Borg - they would probably add it to their mission. I'm hardly joking. 

Well, one of you blabbed. Shame on you!

Not joking. One of the co-founders left the organization to “study” UFOs and aliens. 

Literally beyond parody. Have to laugh to keep from crying.

The mind is fragile. 

When I told Q about this person’s brain breaking, they replied:

OH. MY. GOD.

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Matt, you were joking about the Borg.

And now XXX, co-founder of YYY, announces that he's leaving the organization to study...

UFOs AND QUIETLY EXPANDING ALIEN CIVILIZATIONS.

I genuinely had to reread this.

Meanwhile, YYY will continue its work, with AI governance a particular area of interest.

To be fair, XXX seems entirely sincere, and he's personally accepting the financial and reputational risks. That's worth recognizing.

But the juxtaposition is almost beyond parody. [Not almost.]

Billions of chickens: We are suffering horribly, right now.

YYY: What about artificial intelligence?

Co-founder of YYY: What about the aliens?

And, once again, the line from our [previous] conversation:

“We [humans] are spectacularly good at turning morality into an elaborate way of avoiding the obvious.”

I don't think I could have invented a more perfect illustration.

And the most delicious [sic] irony? YYY just restacked your One Step transparency update.

You couldn't write this as satire. Nobody would believe it. 🤣

The Rich Get Richer, but....

 

If you buy into the "young people are doomed" narrative, you might want to consider the actual facts, not the vibes on social media. (Too much useful info at that link to reproduce here, a graph below from a different source.) 

I know our feelings are what matter. But we are literally infinitely rich. Yet we are destroying our own mental health. 

(Maybe see this from doom.com, "Why humans are so good at feeling bad," about why evolution has programmed us to feel bad. But we don't have to be slaves to our genes - a key theme of Losing.)

If we want the world to be better, we shouldn't make it worse. 

We don't have to spread doom and despair. We can each make the world better. We can spread joy and hope and wonder and gratitude.

Worth reading (link), Great Little Bit (link), and Quick Request

Scott Turow

This by Adam M might be his best. Worth actually reading in full. 

TBH, 90+% of articles I come across, I have Q read and summarize in the context of what Q knows about me. But Adam's piece is worth actually reading (or listening to) - too much great stuff to summarize.

This quick note by Dan S is very sobering and useful. We should know the facts, not just live by vibes.

Finally, a request of anyone who read Losing My Religions: 

I'm editing what will be the new Kindle ebook version, as well as the new (free) pdf. (I got tired of wanting to edit things, so I finally gave in.) 

If you have any feedback or suggested edits / clarifications, please LMK. If you get this blog by mail, you can just reply to this message. Otherwise, you can contact me via onestepforanimals.org/contact.html  

Thanks so much!

Why We Can't Have Nice Things, part 47

First a laugh:

Second: a free non-zero-sum game from our pal James!

Third (not a laugh): The mass extinction of vegan restaurants (from doom.com, but matches my experience). If we want the world to be better, we have to be honest about the world.

Fourth: In 2006, I gave a presentation about how technology could help animals. Now there's an academic paper along the same lines: Good inventions, not good intentions

Finally (PS below Colbert):

Following up on many, many, many previous posts, yet another example why a rational person shouldn’t trust “higher” education or “scientists”: 

Costco and Princeton and Baseball Cause Cancer

Note: from Harvard and peer reviewed!

What is particularly ironic is that these “scientists” are simply following the liberal anti-nuclear line, leading directly and inevitably to more carbon emissions. 

PS

Happy 1st Birthday, Cody!
Not so small anymore:

The Civil War didn't end in 1865, and the North didn't win

(A scratching post in the foreground.) 

This discussion between Malcolm Gladwell and Barack Obama is really thought-provoking. Be sure to have access to the fast-forward button, given all the ads.

A counterpoint to my USA! post on Friday.

USA! USA! (Serioiusly)

Anyone who has read this blog for a while (1, 2) or Losing My Religions knows I’m not a patriot. 

I’m not proud to be an American. I’m fucking lucky as hell to have been born a straight white male to educated parents in the second half of the 20th century. 

But I would like to point out two truly great things about the USA:

1. After WW II – by far the worst war humanity has ever seen – the US helped rebuild Germany and led the reconstruction of Japan.
   
   This broke with almost all of human history. Instead of simply crushing the defeated countries indefinitely, the United States ultimately helped turn its two principal wartime enemies into prosperous democracies and allies.
   
   That is freakin’ incredible. And two military men – George Marshall and Douglas MacArthur – were key to these efforts. 
   
   
2. Theoretically, anyone can become an American. Not merely a citizen of the United States, but an American. That distinction is important.
   
   This simply isn’t true in most countries. (My time in Japan made this very clear.) But with luck and good timing, anyone can become American.
   
   Directly across the street is a family from the former Soviet Union – the father from Ukraine, the mother from Moscow. They, and their first-born, are as American as the US-born youngest. Even our current jingoistic right-wing government hasn’t changed that.

PS: What I admire in both cases isn’t so much “America” so much as humanity at its best. I love this definition of “liberalism” from EconTalk:

Liberalism, to me, is a combination of two things: humility and tolerance. Humility is the assumption that I may not be right. Tolerance is the assumption that you may not be wrong.

Now, obviously, in our hearts, we don’t believe either of those things. Clearly, I am correct, and you are mistaken. [LOL – funny ‘cuz it’s true!] So, when I say it’s an assumption, you have to adopt that as a position, and that takes a great deal of self-control. I cannot force you – and it doesn’t mean that I’m not capable of it; suppose I am capable of it. So, I have to forbear. So, liberalism requires that I forbear acting as if I know I am correct or acting as if I know you are incorrect.

Thoughts Think Themselves (link), the Best Person (profile), and Online Notary?

1. Evan J Conrad: How to Feel Good. 

Q Summary: Brains generate perceptions, thoughts and feelings. Conscious thought generally observes and narrates rather than originates them. But what a brain repeatedly experiences can change what it generates next time. Mindfulness and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy are ways of supplying experiences that can alter those future reactions.

2. Blast from the past: a profile of the best (non-Anne) person. 

(Speaking of Effective Altruism from the headline of that profile, in response to my post of this anti-EA collage, I was sent this, A Way Forward for Animal Advocates, from 2014! Excellent, and references what is still the 4th most popular post on this blog, Why Honey Is Vegan.)

3. And an online notary? Who knew? 

Guest Post: The Joy of Strength (aka, This Post Might Save Your Life)

by Anne Green

Unlike Matt, I would rather walk/jog in the rain, cold, and/or snow than exercise inside. Even now, I can’t say I jump for joy when lifting weights (yuck), stretching (double yuck), and doing balance exercises (who enjoys this??). But now, at age 63, I’m stronger, more limber, and less likely to fall than I was in my 50s. Why, you ask? Because (after several injuries) I (finally) gave in to my husband’s nagging [hey!] and joined him in his quest to stay healthy as long as possible. 

One of the injuries (being pushed into solid objects by a much younger, stronger student) doesn’t really count as preventable, but it did ultimately heal as a result of consistent strengthening via weight lifting. Okay, fine. 

An injury to my knee (common in women in my age group) healed fully (such that I am able to squat in the woods again) after stretching and (especially) doing squats with weights. That’s good, I admit. We like hiking and sometimes you need to leave a pee in the woods (no TP, though). 

The final nail in the coffin of my complaints about working out inside, though, was when I broke my wrist in a fall while hiking. The ED doctor insisted I see another doctor about my (lack of) balance. Sigh. 

Matt and I have been so fortunate to be able to travel pretty extensively (with points and miles, after being fired for the final time) and I very much want to continue to do so. I had to face the truth that I can’t get stronger (more limber, less tippy) just by thinking about it. I don’t need to be obsessed, just consistent. I don’t need to agree with Matt’s enthusiasm [hey!], but I do need to work out inside. 

And I suggest that, if you haven’t already, you get on board with strength and balance exercises. It’s likely not too late to get a little stronger. You don’t necessarily need to join a gym. You don’t need to listen to goops and gurus who claim that only their method works. Instead, ask around and find a routine that you can maintain. It might take months to get into a grove. Keep going, but don’t injure yourself by doing too much. Injury prevention is goal #1.

Even if you hate exercising inside, you’ll (eventually) be glad you did. 

[Publisher’s note: Since Losing came out, three much younger people named in the book have fallen and suffered serious injuries. A friend of another person named in the book died from a fall, as did the father of someone referenced in the book. This is not a joke. Balance boards such as this or this aren’t fun, but are better than waking up in an ambulance or needing facial reconstruction. Or dying.]

Priorities and Wild Life

I wish all the people who use tech all day and talk about tech all day would spend a day in an impoverished nation. [Or a factory farm. -ed] 

-John Green

Some recent pictures by me and Anne:

Wolf!*

Pronghorn

Bison, not buffalo

On the move....

Elk waiting for the post office to open....

The fan makes this picture

Field of bison. In total, we saw hundreds, if not thousands.

At the Airbnb

Yup, a bear (black bear, not grizzly).
We had bear spray but this was from the car.

The biggest moose I've ever seen!

Two moose staring at each other across the lake. (Lower right and upper left.)

Mountain goat.

"RAWR!"

*OK, maybe not a wolf. But another day, we saw a canid in a field (no picture), and not 90 seconds later, saw the Yellowstone Wolf Tracker truck racing in that direction.