> Do you have a blog? No, although somebody requested I write an essay which I made on Gene Wolfe and Peter Thiel called 'Peter and the Wolfe'. https://medium

> Do you have a blog? No, although somebody requested I write an essay which I made on Gene Wolfe and Peter Thiel called 'Peter and the Wolfe'. https://medium.com/@internaut_48577/peter-and-the-wolfe-b8dee6228918#.5y6t5s1rq https://medium.com/@internaut_48577/peter-and-the-wolfe-b8de... > I like reading your thoughts (though I'm unclear on how much of it I believe). I get enjoyment out of speculating about the big picture. How valid those speculations are is very much up in the air. I don't want anybody to take everything I say as gospel, but I would also say that focusing on arbitrary details (e.g. I could be wrong about biotech since I possess no deep insights about how it works) does not meaningfully alter the Tech Stag Hypothesis. It can be falsified of course e.g. if real wages increase but my point is that 'what about solar' rebuttals don't really work. It is possible to have islands of progress in an ocean of misery. This is a really important point. In the BBC series 'Ascent of Man'; Drive for Power: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x206z0e_bbc-ascent-of-man-07-the-drive-for-power_tv http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x206z0e_bbc-ascent-of-man-0...) Jacob Bronowski eloquently points out that the French had all kinds of cute toys, advanced contraptions but it was all so profoundly meaningless. It looked very advanced (and still does) but in another, truer sense, it was a dead end. The real change was happening elsewhere in places and ways less obvious. Back on point, the Thielan perspective is that there is a Liberal view, a Conservative view, a Libertarian view... and so forth about the world. There are other contexts too like Royalist and Communist but the point is that it isn't quite sensible to state that one of these models is right and the others are incorrect. Even were one of these world views completely defunct, we know it existed for a real reason. I hasten to add this is not relativism. Human society is dynamic and contextual. Sometimes something is true or real for a long time, and then it isn't. The divine right of kings is no longer valid. Gene Wolfe explains all of this much better than I could ever hope to. > Your previous posts have convinced me to read The Book of the New Sun. I'm optimistically hoping it is as good as you believe it is. I don't think I've been quite the same since my reading of it. I recommend reading Neil Gaiman's Wolfe Primer: https://www.sfsite.com/fsf/2007/gwng0704.htm https://www.sfsite.com/fsf/2007/gwng0704.htm Don't forget the atmospheric 'music' of the spheres. I think I read Joseph Tainter's Collaspe of Complex Societies at roughly the same time. All of that together was quite an experience! If you could tell me how you get on that would be marvelous. There are so few people who have read Wolfe and it is always nice to hear of travels along the same paths.