Asterisk Mag 12: Books

By Clara Collier @ 2026-01-05T19:58 (+17)

Note: This post was link-posted from the Asterisk by the Forum team, with the author's permission. The author may not see or respond to comments on this post. Summaries were auto-generated using GPT 5.2. Any mistakes are our own.

Space stations. Shadow selves. “The biggest contribution the United States has yet made to society in the modern world.” Are we doomed? Marshall McLuhan’s hit radio single. Don’t say NPC. Anxiety may occur under any circumstances. What’s wrong with culture? What are Chinese founders reading? What if Google Books just worked? We have all the ideas we need.

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:

• Adam Kroetsch argues that the FDA’s power to shape safe, effective drug development has always rested on institutional reputation and expert trust, and that its current crisis reflects broader erosion of trust with real consequences for innovation, public health, and rational regulation.
• Harry Law examines how NASA’s history shows a recurring trade-off between visionary, high-upside space ambitions and the political need to prioritize credible, near-term projects, often sidelining speculative ideas despite their long-run potential for impact.
• The Editors argue that while book reading is declining and its instrumental benefits are debatable, sustained engagement with long-form books still matters for deep understanding, perspective-taking, and cultural impact in ways harder to replace.
• Cate Hall examines agency as a learnable capacity to notice and act on real options, arguing that for communities like EA it should be cultivated deliberately and ethically rather than confused with ambition, conformity, or tech-driven status scripts.
• Karthik Tadepalli argues that the slowdown in economic growth reflects failures in market allocation and commercialization, not a decline in our ability to generate valuable new ideas.
• Celine Nguyen argues that perceptions of cultural decline are less about the internet reducing creativity and more about the erosion of sustainable criticism ecosystems, which undermines our ability to identify, coordinate, and reward genuinely innovative work in a metric-driven attention economy.
• Meghan Boilard examines why The Telepathy Tapes attracts wide belief by tracing its emotionally compelling claims about autistic telepathy to recycled pseudoscience, weak evidence, and cognitive biases that challenge standards of epistemic rigor and ethical responsibility.
• Aaron Labaree examines Jung’s autobiography as a portrait of a thinker whose enduring appeal lies in the tension between rigorous clinical insight and speculative, often unscientific visions, highlighting both the limits and the psychological allure of meaning-making beyond evidence-based therapy.
• Afra Wang analyzes how Chinese tech elites draw on a hybrid intellectual canon—combining Silicon Valley management texts, Maoist strategy, classical philosophy, and local science fiction—to shape entrepreneurial decision-making under China’s distinctive political and institutional constraints.
• Monica Westin argues that the long-promised universal digital library failed for human readers due to copyright and licensing barriers, and that pragmatic collective licensing reforms could unlock vast social value by restoring equitable, legal access to out-of-print knowledge.
• Kevin Hawickhorst examines how David Lilienthal’s Tennessee Valley Authority combined a moral vision of shared prosperity with disciplined bureaucratic execution, arguing that today’s abundance advocates should learn from both the inspiring rhetoric and the less visible administrative rigor behind its real-world impact.
• Awais Aftab argues that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) has expanded far beyond its original purpose into an overburdened classification system that aids coordination and research but cannot capture the causal complexity of mental illness or serve as a guide to personal identity, calling for more restrained and context-aware use of diagnosis.
• Alan Levinovitz argues that the physical form and provenance of books shape how readers create meaning and ethical attachment, showing that material context can add irreducible value beyond informational content alone.
• Sheon Han reflects on turning South Korea’s compulsory military service into a private reading retreat, arguing that literature can preserve autonomy and moral self-awareness under coercive systems but does not by itself guarantee ethical action or solidarity with others.

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