Daily Log Digest – Week 32, 2025
2025-08-15
Rationalist Cults
Why Are There So Many Rationalist Cults?—Asterisk
Great article which makes the movie Mountainhead seem very team in comparision.
The rationalist community as a whole is remarkably functional. Like any subculture, it is rife with gossip, personality conflicts, and drama that is utterly incomprehensible to outsiders. But overall, the community’s activities are less drinking the Kool-Aid and more mutual support and vegan-inclusive summer barbeques.
Nevertheless, some groups within the community have wound up wildly _dys_functional–a term I’m using to sidestep definitional arguments about what is and isn’t a cult. And some of the blame can be put on the rationalist community’s marketing.
The Sequences make certain implicit promises. There is an art of thinking better, and we’ve figured it out. If you learn it, you can solve all your problems, become brilliant and hardworking and successful and happy, and be one of the small elite shaping not only society but the entire future of humanity.
This is, not to put too fine a point on it, not true.
Migraines
Why Hasn’t Medical Science Cured Chronic Headaches? | The New Yorker #headache #migraine
Why are migraines such a common part of human experience? Zeller notes that animals do not seem to suffer chronic headaches. “I’ve never seen one of my pets lie in its bed with its paw over its head,” an Australian pharmacologist tells him. This may indicate that migraines are produced by the interaction of the most primitive parts of our brain and the cortical structures that have evolved more recently. Zeller suggests that evolutionary biology may hold an explanation for chronic headaches. “It’s not hard to imagine that an acutely sensitive nervous system, attuned and highly responsive to sounds, sights, smells, and threats, would be valuable to our primitive forebears on the predatory savannah,” he writes. “Maybe the desirability of these triggerable, keenly attentive senses meant that our internal wiring would evolve to a razor’s edge, forever spring-loaded, but prone, in some of us, to errant firing under the wrong conditions.”
Despite our limited understanding of the biology of chronic headaches, there have been recent advances in identifying molecules in the brain which mediate pain. The discovery of a neurotransmitter called calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) has markedly advanced the understanding and the treatment of migraine. This discovery came about when researchers inserted cannulas around patients’ fifth cranial nerve to sample the release of proteins during migraine and found CGRP in abundance. It was released from trigeminal nerve endings surrounding cranial blood vessels. Subsequent experiments found that intravenous infusions of CGRP invariably produced migraines.
GenZ and their love life
What unrestricted internet access did to Gen Z’s love life #genz #love #relationships
Welcome to life at the sharp end of the romantic recession, where today’s under-30s are more likely to be single than either their parents or grandparents were at their age. On TikTok, Nashville-based creator Jordy makes videos explaining what it’s like to go through your twenties without a partner. “This era of dating is actually HORRIFYING,” commiserates one of her followers. “No boyfriends no talking stage no situationships no NOTHING.”
Every generation is supposed to rebel against the ones that came before — making choices that baffle their elders. But who could have predicted that Gen Z’s rebellion would be one of abstinence?
The potential culprits for this romantic estrangement span high house prices (which force young people to live at home), pandemic social-distancing, overly protective parents and a growing political divide driving a wedge between liberal young women and more conservative young men.
But the real villain is the internet. Growing up with access to an online content free-for-all appears to have produced a generation with progressive attitudes and puritanical habits, who are increasingly likely to be teetotal, prefer not to see nudity in films and opt out of relationships. Dr Amanda Gesselman, research scientist at the Kinsey Institute, has described the change as a shift towards “self-sourced intimacy”.
As for the tech sector, its response has been to double down. Accused of creating the circumstances that have increased societal isolation, it has found a way to monetise the situation. In the past year, generative AI companies have released new tools marketed more as friends than productivity aids. At the tame end of the spectrum is Microsoft’s Copilot Appearance — a cute, squishy cartoon cloud. Talk to the AI chatbot in voice mode and the cloud will spin and jump and react with facial expressions as it talks back to you. (Sample chat: “I can’t WAIT to learn more about you.”)