Best of eriktorenberg.substack.com on Kiwi News
Most upvoted by Kiwi News readers
16 stories from eriktorenberg.substack.com have been shared on Kiwi News since 25 June 2023, with 24 upvotes and 1 comment in total. The latest was shared on 3 January 2025. They are listed below, most upvoted first.
Text under a title is an AI summary of the linked article.
- "I am rich and have no idea what to do with my life"
Vinay Hiremath, cofounder and CTO of Loom, writes about feeling lost after selling his company, despite having no need to work again. He describes a $60m pay package he gave up by leaving the acquiring company, followed by two weeks of meetings with robotics investors and founders that left him deciding not to start a robotics company. He then climbed a 6800m Himalayan peak with no prior mountaineering experience, worked on DOGE for four weeks before declining to move to DC, and is now in Hawaii learning physics, which he says he enjoys for its own sake.
- America the Oligarchy
The article argues that America is better understood as an oligarchy than as a democracy, citing a private-public partnership in which companies and government collude to protect their power. It says regulatory capture lets corporations shape rules that cement their market positions, while government captures companies, with Marc Andreessen describing how Dodd-Frank left the three too-big-to-fail banks larger after 2007-2008. The author's framing, which the text presents as an "emergent collusion" rather than a conspiracy, holds that the managerial elite coordinates without formal agreement and that the Iron Law of Oligarchy means majorities cannot organize to govern.
- How Communities Die
Communities more often decline from too many casual newcomers, or mops, than from sociopaths, because mops dilute the brand that members use to signal who they are. David Chapman's theory holds that geeks start a community, mops follow, and sociopaths then exploit what remains, but the author thinks mop dilution is the more common cause. Chapman suggests an optimal mop-to-geek ratio of about 6:1, with ratios above 10:1 becoming unworkable. The author also argues that Effective Altruism had already jumped the shark before SBF's fraud.
- Group Narcissism
The piece argues that the decline of WASP-led civility has fueled group narcissism and vicarious group narcissism, drawing on sociologist John Cuddihy's model. Cuddihy defines group narcissism as an ethnic group's exaggerated sense of its own virtues and superiority, which produces a disproportionate response when threatened. It claims white people express vicarious group narcissism through causes such as BLM and MeToo, and that new progressive elites, described as foxes rather than lions, no longer celebrate productive habits. It ties this to Balkanization and cites John Gray's call for a modus vivendi between cultures.
- Reintroducing stigma
The article argues that no society is neutral on moral questions, since every system of choice shapes behavior, and that stigmas are needed as guardrails against harmful choices. It cites the claim that children in fatherless homes are ten times more likely to experience abuse or neglect than those with fathers, and it notes that stigma around out-of-wedlock births has eased. Rob Henderson is quoted criticizing the view that unhappiness stems from social judgment rather than the behaviors themselves. The author holds that stigmas cannot be removed, only transferred to other behaviors, and asks how to balance stigma enforcement with a marketplace of ideas.
- The case for and against liberalism
Liberalism, which settles conflict through markets, democracy and science, is vulnerable to illiberalism because it tries to pursue both freedom and equity and sacrifices freedom to reach equity. N.S. Lyons' review of Fukuyama describes a cycle in which liberals adopt Marxist demands for new rights after unfreedom and inequality persist. An analogy from a conversation with Eric Weinstein likens critical theory to Takraw, a different game played on liberalism's court. Critics raise fundamentalist, egalitarian and humanitarian objections, while classical liberals reply that liberal principles should be reinforced.
- My Hoffman Process Experience
The author reflects on a week at The Hoffman Process retreat, which they describe as a powerful and possibly life-changing experience, while saying they are reluctant to recommend it without reservation. The retreat is based on the idea of negative love, that people adopt negative patterns in childhood and can reprogram them, and it uses physical, emotional, spiritual and intellectual modalities with no phones or internet. The author says they went partly to address a phone addiction and a sense of disconnection from their body, after a somatic therapist suggested a childhood trauma response had caused it.
- Thoughts on Mental Health
The author argues that mental health framing has become a status marker, a source of political divisions, and a regime that is not reducing distress, though the text's central claim is that destigmatizing mental illness has swung too far. The article cites a rise in high school students reporting persistent sadness or hopelessness, up 40% from 2009 to 2019, and a 51% rise in hospitalizations for suicide attempts by girls from 2019 to 2021. It quotes Freddie Deboer on "the gentrification of disability" and says Katherine Boyle's piece on suffering makes a related point about resilience.
- Take the Clearpill
The article argues that people choose beliefs for their value in signaling tribal membership rather than for their accuracy, so truth often fails to win in politics. It draws on Leo Strauss's view that political life rests on partial opinions while philosophy seeks the big picture, and on Ernst Junger's anarch in Eumeswil as a model for opting out of politics. It introduces "taking the clearpill," which means avoiding activism because opposing a regime only strengthens it, and avoiding any position that triggers the friend/enemy distinction.
- Let Sleeping Dogs Lie
The essay argues that being too principled, meaning insisting on settling every wrong through grudges, demands or revenge, can block flourishing, and that the most effective people stay principled in their own actions while staying flexible about other people and situations they cannot control. It compares this to basketball, where the saying "ball don't lie" implies that unfair calls even out over time, but the author says cosmic debts usually don't settle. It concludes that keeping score makes people resentful, and that people who avoided everyone who had treated them unfairly would end up alone.
- Build Nuclear. Frak. Drill.
The author argues that nuclear energy is the answer to climate change, calling it cheaper, cleaner, safer and more efficient than alternatives. Nuclear is said to cost about $30 per megawatt-hour, compared with $57 to $148 for coal, and to produce 4x less carbon than solar. The article claims the 60 years of US spent fuel would fit in one football field and that Chernobyl caused far fewer deaths than is commonly thought. It also contrasts France, which generates most of its power from nuclear, with Germany, which produces about 13% from nuclear.
- A Schism in The Current Thing
Israel and Palestine has become a new kind of Current Thing that splits the left, unlike earlier moral movements such as BLM, MeToo and Ukraine, which had unequivocal support across the board. Younger people support Palestine while older people support Israel, a generational schism that the text links to college politics, TikTok, and younger cohorts being less religious and more diverse. Western governments have put Israeli flags on arches, while Harvard and the NYT have been more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. The text also notes that Jews are 10% of billionaires and 25% of Democratic Party donor capital, so they materially influence leftist institutions.
- The matching problem in dating
Online dating is described as creating a matching problem in which roughly 80% of women seek 20% of men, a dynamic linked to declining marriage and population. Men swipe right on 60% of women, women swipe right on 4.5% of men, and 90% of women's swipes are for men over 6'0. Couples who meet through apps reportedly break up at twice the rate of those who meet through friends and family, and 28% of men under 30 report no sex in the past year, a figure that has doubled in a decade.
- What does the gray tribe believe?
Techies lack a political home, and a proposed "gray tribe" of non-left, non-MAGA centrists, an idea Balaji discussed in a seven-hour conversation, is offered as one answer. The article says the existing options each have problems: the left is hostile to tech, the right is tied to losing social issues, libertarians always lose, and effective altruism is essentially progressive. Listed gray tribe positions include that being an elite is acceptable, that crime should be punished, that tech is good, that schools should teach math rather than indoctrinate, and that abortion and gay marriage rights should not be rolled back.
- What is left? What is right?
Left and right are presented less as fixed ideologies than as tribal coalitions whose positions switch sides over time while the tribes persist. Examples include Democrats being the party of the South and segregation until LBJ, and Brooks describing conservative parties across the West recasting themselves as champions of the working class. Drawing on Balaji Srinivasan's Network State, two factions arise because coalition-forming is game-theoretically optimal, with leftism framed as a status-acquisition tactic and rightism as a status-retention tactic.
- More people is better
The author argues that more people is better, and that the fear of overpopulation has given way to a real problem of underpopulation. Citing Andrew McAfee's "dematerialization" concept, the piece says economies can now grow with fewer resources, and that U.S. fertility has fallen from almost four children per woman in 1960 to below 1.7 today. It argues that population growth supports market demand, productivity through specialization, and innovation, and it points to immigration falling from 1 million to 250,000 since 2016 as a problem to fix.