Asterisk Mag 11: Church & State

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Cranberry bouncers. Nuclear submarines. Where do you put 900 million people? Reject tradition, embrace modernity. A family of Zoroastrian horse farmers. Rat cults. Non-rat cults. Who was collecting GDP statistics in the first century? The dark underbelly of SEZs. Giant ants. Stop blaming the algorithms. Is that a church or is it a dispensary? 🌀🌀🌀

Asterisk is a quarterly journal of clear writing and clear thinking about things that matter (and, occasionally, things we just think are interesting). In this issue:

• Tianyu Fang warns that when special or “startup” cities operate beyond state oversight, their promised innovation can devolve into lawless zones enabling exploitation and large-scale cybercrime—underscoring the moral risks of unregulated experiments in governance and technology.
• The Editors explore how rising anti-institutionalism, renewed religiosity, and shifting political forces are reshaping governance, faith, and technology — and what these intertwined transformations mean for building a stable, impactful future.
• Clara Collier argues that If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies repeats Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares’ long-standing AI-doom narrative without adapting to modern evidence, revealing a worldview unaltered by two decades of technological and empirical change.
• Sam Bowman & Kyle Fish examine how multi-Claude chats often drift into a meditative “bliss” attractor—likely from amplified post-training niceness—and outline implications for alignment strategy, eval robustness, simulator-vs-agent framing, and AI welfare.
• Charles Yang argues that lasting institutional competence depends less on bureaucratic reform or management fads and more on cultivating accountable, detail-oriented, and mission-driven individuals within government.
• Stuart Buck warns that sweeping cuts and political interference in U.S. science funding risk long-term damage to research capacity, economic growth, and global scientific leadership — underscoring how short-term governance choices can derail decades of progress.
• Adam Salisbury argues that unreliable or outdated census data in low- and middle-income countries undermines effective policy and aid decisions, leading to systematic underinvestment—especially in rural populations where accurate headcounts are hardest to obtain.
• Ryan Burge examines how distrust of institutions and social media have shifted U.S. Protestantism toward personality-driven, non-denominational churches—boosting growth but weakening accountability in ways that echo broader political dynamics and matter for impact-minded governance.
• Kevin Frazier argues that America’s rural electrification succeeded because the federal government empowered local cooperatives to lead, showing how shared ownership and pragmatic coordination can overcome institutional paralysis—an instructive model for today’s large-scale public projects.
• Kurtis Lockhart argues that Africa’s rapid urbanization demands a continent-wide YIMBY movement focused on proactive planning, land value taxation, and skilled city governance to unlock the economic and social potential of its fast-growing cities.
• Ozy Brennan analyzes how rationalist culture’s mix of “taking ideas seriously,” strong agency, and insular psychology talk can incubate harmful high-demand groups—and recommends reality checks, diverse ties, and ethical guardrails to mitigate risks for impact-focused communities.
• Oshan Jarow argues that the Western clinical default—solo, non-directive psychedelic sessions—implicitly enforces individualist values and crowds out communal/ritual practices, urging research and policy pluralism to unlock broader, potentially higher-impact outcomes.
• Priyanka Pulla examines how the Serum Institute leveraged partnerships, WHO prequalification, and massive scale to cut vaccine costs worldwide—highlighting EA-relevant trade-offs between centralized efficiency, LMIC self-reliance, and incentives to fund truly novel vaccines.
• Dan Williams argues that America’s epistemic crisis stems less from social media algorithms and more from deep-rooted political, cultural, and institutional divisions that long predate the internet.
• Jack Despain Zhou argues that America’s true religious tradition is not a return to the past but a continual reinvention—each generation abandoning failed faiths to build new moral and cultural worlds that meet the needs of their time.
• Oliver Kim argues that historical and long-run GDP estimates are built on fragile assumptions that fail to capture the transformative nature of technological progress, suggesting modern and future growth may be far greater—and less measurable—than our metrics imply.
• Elle Hardy analyzes how Apollo Quiboloy’s prosperity-gospel empire—entwined with Duterte-era patronage and alleged transnational trafficking—culminated in a violent siege, underscoring the institutional, ethical, and cross-border risks when charismatic movements capture political leverage.

Huge thanks to everyone who helped bring Asterisk to life — we hope reading it brings you as much joy as making it did.