I've finally finished reading 'Making Sense of Tantric Buddhism' by Christian Wedemeyer. I started on the book the better part of a year ago, making steady progress until classes resumed. Now with Thanksgiving, I've been able to give it the time it deserved. This is the first scholarly work on Tantra I've yet read (also the first scholarly work of history and semiology, so there was a period of adjustment there), and this book is a good antidote to misinformation from other sources. Wedemeyer is especially concerned with errors of history and interpretation of Tantra, and he lays out some very, very large errors in the current literature, some of which I had absorbed second-hand through the writing of David Chapman. I'll be writing up a reflection on these disagreements swiftly. Definition and Elaboration of Tantra, and the Setup for his ultimate Thesis As the term will be used in what follows, Tantric Buddhism comprehends those forms of esoteric Buddhism that...
[Edit: The Book Review Contest has ended, and I particularly recommend you read the gold medalist, Lars Doucet’s review of Progress and Poverty, which I take a look at here ] This was the book review I submitted for Scott Alexander's book review contest. Sadly, it was not a finalist, and now that the runners-up have been released, I reproduce it here. If you enjoy the review, do give it the rating you think it deserves on the Runner-Up Votes , and check out some of the other non-finalists ( Runners-Up A-R , Runners-Up S-W ). Also worth noting, I submitted my own review before Scott published his , and I preregistered this book for review last year when the contest was announced. I. Prologue Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder , by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, seems to have anticipated my project of reviewing it, and took pains to make it difficult for me. Writing on the book’s structure: Someone in the business of “summarizing” books would have to write four or five separate des...
After the winners of the ACX Book Review Contest were announced, I took a closer look at the gold medalist, Lars Doucet's review of Henry George's Progress and Poverty . Reading it, I was surprised to find the outline of a birds-eye political philosophy which didn't make me want to tear my hair out. I brought this up with family, and immediately got stuck on whether or not Bitcoin counted as Wealth in the Georgist framework, as expected. So before I read the text itself, I wanted to jot down some early thoughts. Much of this post is taken directly from Doucet's review. First, I'll need to examine George's definition of Wealth, why money doesn't fit the bill, and what it means for money to be a claim on wealth, and whether digital currencies are closer to dollars or gold bars. This has less to do with Georgism and more with settling a personal argument. Second, before Georgism, the high-level political philosophy which made the most sense to me was David F...
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