Scott Alexander (3)

Very enjoyable and engaging read. Some parts are repetitive in a way that's common with books written and published chapter-by-chapter rather than as one cohesive whole. Some of the theology is rather Christian slanted for a book about Kabalah and Jewish thought (ie, the original text of the Tanach doesn't actually say anything against homosexuality; that interpretation is based on inaccurate translations and Christian Puritanism and Evangelism justifying hatred). But it doesn't detract too much from the story or message.… (more)

Very amusing and original, for perhaps a hundred pages. But then there is nothing new. It becomes very, very tedious—the plot as well as the linguistic mysticism—and certainly could benefit from a rewrite and an editor.

> Fifty years ago, Apollo 8 cracked the sky open and people started discovering the Names of God. A decade later, corporations started patenting them, demanding license fees for anyone who wanted to work miracles with them. A decade after that, they codified the whole system into international law and created UNSONG – the United Nations Subcommittee On Names of God – to enforce it.

> UNSONG and the theonomics corporations couldn’t be allowed to whore out the Names of God unchallenged. A revolution was coming, and we were going to be ready for it. Nobody was going to get a monopoly on the Divine without fighting for it. And that was why every Wednesday night the choir of the Unitarian Church would meet in secret and sing the hidden transcendent Names of God in Pig Latin.

> even the Heaven-bound righteous have a few sins, and since those sins won’t be punished in Heaven, they have to be punished here on Earth. Therefore, the righteous suffer on Earth. But even the Hell-bound wicked have a few virtues. And since those virtues won’t be rewarded in Hell, they have to be rewarded here on Earth. Therefore, the wicked prosper on Earth. Then people ask why the righteous suffer and the wicked prosper, and it looks like a mystery, but it actually makes total sense.”

> Fermi crunched various numbers and found that even under the most conservative assumptions the Earth should have been visited by just about a zillion extraterrestrial civilizations, instead of the zero that humans actually observed. He figured there must be some unseen flaw in his calculations, and it bothered him a little for the rest of his life. He could have avoided a lot of anguish if he had just followed the data to their obvious conclusion and admitted the stars probably didn’t exist.

> “Some of the demons have nicknamed this place Brimstone Acres,” Thagirion was saying. “It’s the nice part of Hell – relatively speaking, of course. We reserve it for the worst sinners. Hitler has a villa here. So do Beria and LaLaurie. It’s basic incentive theory. If the worst sinners got the worst parts of Hell, then people who were pretty sure they were hellbound might still hold back a little bit in order to make their punishment a little more tolerable. We try to encourage the opposite.

> "He said that he would cut the baby in half. And one of the people agreed to that, but that meant she didn't love the baby very much, so the king gave it to the other person. And then lots of people liked him and said he had made a wise decision. So since Palestine is okay with cutting the land in half, but Israel isn't, giving it to Israel is the wise thing to do"

> The world has its own peculiar narrative logic that determines the course of a fight far more surely than skill ever could. Placebomancers are those who embrace this. A placebomantic duel is two masters casting off pretense and using the narrative against each other directly.”

> Not A Metaphor shot east, like a bullet, like a rocket, like a comet.… (more)