Meditations on Moloch

The blogpost that inspired it all…

Have you ever read something so coherent and obviously revelatory, it’s almost a spiritual experience? As though you just realised you’ve been walking around wearing a translucent blindfold your whole life, and now you can finally rip it off and see properly? That’s what “Meditations on Moloch” was for me.

Written in 2014 by the pseudonymous author Scott Alexander of Astral Codex Ten (formerly Slate Star Codex), it’s one of the clearest and most detailed explainers of WHY we do so many obviously stupid things to ourselves a collective level, and WHY it’s so hard to stop doing them.

If you haven’t read it yet, go do it. It takes around an hour to complete, and if you care about the future, it’s the most effective hour you can spend to truly grasp of the nature of the enemy we face.

Plot twist: it’s not a cabal of greedy businessmen. Or lizard people.

It’s something far, far worse…