Links 5 September 2025

Conjoined clay toads fro Vichama, Peru

If you're curious about the Bhagavad Gita and its place in Hinduism, this 30-minute Alan Watts lecture seems like a good starting place.

A philosopher argues for immortality, summary and link at Marginal Revolution. My only deep thought on this topic is that we don't really understand time, and if the universe is a sort of 4-dimensional construction, every life, and everything else, is around forever anyway.

Military expert describes all 76 weapons shown in the Chinese parade, 25-minute video.

Thread on the sex recession in America, with some interesting comments as well.

Interesting month coming up for Congress.

Dystopian drawings of people in boxes by Ben Tolman.

Interesting NY Times article on women having doubts about birth control pills. The article's focus is on social media but I have known many smart women who refused to take the pill, going back to the 1970s, so qualms about messing with your body's hormonal cycles are not new.

The weird debate over vaccinating newborns against Hepatitis B, with many accusations of wokeness and tyranny. This piece doesn't even mention that we long ago had a similar debate over treating newborns for gonorrhea, which can cause blindness. The authorities decided back then, and have decided again now, that you simply can't trust parents to say if they have engaged in risky sex. 

Robin Hanson talks to ChatGPT about past cultural conflicts between the young and the old. ChatGPT says the young almost always win. I agree in general but I would say that not all of these examples are actually the young vs. the old. Alcohol prohibition in the US was not young drinkers vs. old fogeys. 

Manhood, this author argues, is socially constructed rather than biological, because men naturally do as little as possible: "manhood exists to push against the default setting: self-indulgence and avoidance of responsibility."

One-hour video on the SR-71 Blackbird. It has nearly nine million views and gets huge praise from aviation buffs and engineers.

What did the Voyager spacecraft find at the heliopause?

The US population may fall in 2025 (Twitter/X, Substack), because negative immigration my cancel out the small surplus of births over deaths.

Interesting article on the Romanian educational system, which may be the most stratified in the world; the result is great performance on the International Math Olympiad and other elite venues, but overall mediocrity.

Alex Tabarrok on the simple mathematics of Chinese innovation: "In the 20th century the world’s most populous countries were poor but that was neither the case historically nor will it be true in the 21st century."

Autism "fast facts" by a stats wonk. (Twitter/X) Here's a good one: "When financial incentives for schools to diagnose autism are enacted, rates rise sharply, by an average of 25% in a single year." Longer article from the same source.

Long essay on the generally mediocre economic returns for biotech startups, and the hope that AI will radically improve the process of discovering new drugs and other useful molecules.

Paywalled psychology paper arguing that political extremists of both the left and the right have similar brain activity patterns that emphasize emotional reaction.

Immigration and government finances in Britain. The claim is that immigrants are a net positive.

From the same author, the impact of the Mariel Boatlift of 1980, which brought 125,000 Cubans to Miami in one month. 

Ethan Mollick asks the LLMs to create "the most annoying CAPTCHA in the world." Very amusing. (Twitter/X)

Review of Agnes Callard's new book, subtitled "The Case for a Philosophical Life."

Remains of a wooden Roman bridge found in Switzerland.

An argument that liberal democracy cannot be defended without a realistic view of human nature.

Matt Yglesias explains how dislike of immigrants drives stupid economics: "I don't like seeing immigrants from India at my local Costco is, IMO, not a great political principle but everyone is entitled to their preferences. But the danger metastasizes when people build a whole crank economic theory around their arbitrary preference." (Twitter/X)

On Twitter/X, an economist responds to all the talking points used to defend Trump's tariffs, so he doesn't have to keep doing it over and over again.