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4 episodes with bismarck analysis
4 episodes with bismarck analysis
3 episodes with bismarck analysis
3 episodes with bismarck analysis
2 episodes with bismarck analysis
2 episodes with bismarck analysis
3 episodes with bismarck analysis
3 episodes with bismarck analysis
2 episodes with bismarck analysis
Samo Burja is a researcher, strategist, and founder of Bismarck Analysis and on the editorial board of Palladium Magazine. Samo is known for his work on how institutions shape civilization and his book “The Great Founder Theory.”Explore Infinita City:* Explore the Archive: The Infinita City Times* Visit Infinita City* Join the Builders' Hub on Telegram* Follow Infinita City on X This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.strandedtechnologies.com
Samo Burja is an entrepreneur and political researcher. He's the founder of Bismarck Analysis and the editor of Palladium Magazine, a publication focused on governance and societal challenges.In this episode of World of DaaS, Samo and Auren discuss: Why great founders shape civilizationGlobal fertility decline and its implicationsThe magic of founders at age 23Why trust in institutions is collapsingLooking for more tech, data and venture capital intel? Head to worldofdaas.com for our podcast, newsletter and events, and follow us on X @worldofdaas. You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Samo Burja on X at @SamoBurja. Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com)
Ben Landau Taylor is a writer, historian, and one of the minds behind the Bismark Brief, whose research is focused on understanding the life cycle of civilizations. Much of his work has been informed by the work of Caroll Quigley, who in the 1970s put together a seven part framework for how civilizations are born, mature, and eventually go extinct. His model was one of an economic instrument of expansion, where the tools of growth defined the success of the empire - a direct contradiction to contemporary Arnold Toynbee's perspective that it wasn't economics that drove civilization - it was some kind of spiritual commitment to a common cause. The economic model seemed more reasonable to Taylor, who then wanted to know - was it simply applicable to European history, or was this a more universal model? We talk about the ways that the rise and fall of civilizations generalizes across history, the place our own civilization is in the progression, and what the future might hold. READ QUIGLEY: https://amzn.to/3YSEMaF READ TOYNBEE: https://amzn.to/4hSdIB3 READ CIVILIZATION LIT: https://amzn.to/3OcHbbC (affiliate links) PATREON: get episodes early + join our weekly Patron Chat https://bit.ly/3lcAasB MERCH: Rock some DemystifySci gear : https://demystifysci.myspreadshop.com/ AMAZON: Do your shopping through this link: https://amzn.to/3YyoT98 (00:00) Go! (07:08:00) The Economic Engine (00:17:07) Motivations Behind Historical Crusades (00:27:19) Spiritual and Economic Motives (00:37:12) Fragility and Stability in Civilizations (00:47:56) Evolution of Civilizations (00:56:42) Patterns in Civilizational Waves (01:03:52) Preservation and Historical Amnesia (01:12:29) Historical Narratives and Bias (01:21:11) Stagnation and Adaptation (01:30:49) Manorial Systems and Economic Expansion (01:41:38) Financial Capitalism's Role (01:50:02) Financial Hoarding and Redistribution (01:58:13) Metaverse and Digital Economies (02:04:18) Predicting Technological Advancements (02:11:12) AI Development and Potential (02:21:05) Designing Safeguards Against Institutional Control (02:29:26) Importance of Mythology in Society (02:39:38) Significance of Ancient Chinese Canal Systems #LegacyOfCivilizations #EconomicTheory #Crusades #Civilization #History #HistoricalAnalysis #RiseAndFall #CulturalEvolution #HistoricalTrends #EconomicExpansion #ChineseHistory #InstitutionalChange #SpiritualMotives #EconomicMotives #ChurchAndState #InnovativeSystems #Metaverse #Automation #AI #TechnologicalAdvancements #FutureOfSociety, #sciencepodcast, #longformpodcast Check our short-films channel, @DemystifySci: https://www.youtube.com/c/DemystifyingScience AND our material science investigations of atomics, @MaterialAtomics https://www.youtube.com/@MaterialAtomics Join our mailing list https://bit.ly/3v3kz2S PODCAST INFO: Anastasia completed her PhD studying bioelectricity at Columbia University. When not talking to brilliant people or making movies, she spends her time painting, reading, and guiding backcountry excursions. Shilo also did his PhD at Columbia studying the elastic properties of molecular water. When he's not in the film studio, he's exploring sound in music. They are both freelance professors at various universities. - Blog: http://DemystifySci.com/blog - RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/2be66934/podcast/rss - Donate: https://bit.ly/3wkPqaD - Swag: https://bit.ly/2PXdC2y SOCIAL: - Discord: https://discord.gg/MJzKT8CQub - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/DemystifySci - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/DemystifySci/ - Twitter: https://twitter.com/DemystifySci MUSIC: -Shilo Delay: https://g.co/kgs/oty671
In this episode of Whatifalthist, host Rudyard is joined by Samo Burja, founder of Bismarck Analysis and Palladium Magazine. They engage in a wide-ranging discussion covering political dynamics, the impact of technology on society, and the historical parallels that can be drawn from current events. For full shownotes, visit highlight: https://highlightai.com/share/35528506-03e8-4ef2-84b2-5424f7f2fc7b
Today on Live Players, we're releasing an interview from Steve Hsu on the Manifold Podcast with Samo Burja. They unravel the complexities of our world, discussing China's rise, Europe's future, and industrial shifts. This episode delves into unique research methods, journalism challenges, and the dynamic ecosystem of Silicon Valley. They explored urbanization impacts, labor shortages, and the evolution of cultural and political movements, and the strategic roles of industry giants, the potential for retired tech experts in science, and the crossroads where intellectual life meets venture capital. —
Samo Burja founded Bismarck Analysis, a consulting firm that investigates the political and institutional landscape of society. He is a Senior Research Fellow in Political Science at the Foresight Institute where he advises on how institutions can shape the future of technology. Since 2024, he has chaired the editorial board of Palladium Magazine, a non-partisan publication that explores the future of governance and society through international journalism, long-form analysis, and social philosophy. From 2020 to 2023, he was a Research Fellow at the Long Now Foundation where he studied how institutions can endure for centuries and millennia.Samo writes and speaks on history, institutions, and strategy with a focus on exceptional leaders that create new social and political forms. Image has systematized this approach as “Great Founder Theory.”Steve and Samo discuss:(00:00) - Introduction (01:38) - Meet Samo Burja: Founder of Bismarck Analysis (03:17) - Palladium Magazine: A West Coast Publication (06:37) - The Unique Culture of Silicon Valley (12:53) - Inside Bismarck Analysis: Services and Clients (21:35) - The Role of Technology in Global Innovation (32:13) - The Influence of Rationalists and Effective Altruists (48:07) - European Tech Policies and Global Competition (49:28) - The Role of Taiwan and China in Tech Manufacturing (51:12) - Geopolitical Dynamics and Strategic Alliances (52:49) - China's Provincial Power and Industrial Strategy (56:02) - Urbanization and Demography, Ancient Society (59:41) - Intellectual Pursuits and Cultural Dynamics (01:04:09) - Intellectuals, SF, and Global Influence (01:13:45) - Fertility Rates, Urbanization, and Forgotten Migration (01:22:24) - Interest in Cultural Dynamics and Population Rates (01:26:03) - Daily Life as an Intellectual Music used with permission from Blade Runner Blues Livestream improvisation by State Azure.--Steve Hsu is Professor of Theoretical Physics and of Computational Mathematics, Science, and Engineering at Michigan State University. Previously, he was Senior Vice President for Research and Innovation at MSU and Director of the Institute of Theoretical Science at the University of Oregon. Hsu is a startup founder (SuperFocus, SafeWeb, Genomic Prediction, Othram) and advisor to venture capital and other investment firms. He was educated at Caltech and Berkeley, was a Harvard Junior Fellow, and has held faculty positions at Yale, the University of Oregon, and MSU.Please send any questions or suggestions to manifold1podcast@gmail.com or Steve on X @hsu_steve.
In this episode of History 102, 'WhatIfAltHist' creator Rudyard Lynch is joined again by Bismarck Analysis's Samo Burja (podcast host: Live Players) for a mind-bending discussion and deep dive into the concept of "long ripples" — how ideas and events from the distant past continue to shape our present and future in unexpected ways. From Plato's influence on modern political movements to the unforeseen consequences of the Industrial Revolution, this conversation challenges our understanding of historical cause and effect. Are we truly progressing, or are we caught in cycles we fail to recognize? Can we learn from the past, or are we doomed to repeat it in new, technologically-amplified ways? This episode is a rollercoaster ride through time, technology, and human nature, forcing us to reconsider our place in the grand sweep of history.
Erik Torenberg and Samo Burja are joined by Ben Landau-Taylor, a Senior Analyst at Bismarck Analysis. Ben recently published an article in Palladium Magazine about the pervasive problem of fraud in academia. They discussed how fraudulent activities, particularly in medical research, often go undetected due to flawed peer review processes and institutional protectionism. They explore key cases, and possible solutions, including external watchdogs, intellectual authorities and regulatory bodies in maintaining academic integrity. —
In this episode of History 102, Rudyard Lynch and Erik Torenberg are joined by Bismarck Analysis's Samo Burja (podcast host: Live Players) to uncover the hidden threads connecting ancient Babylon to Silicon Valley. Did you know that 2,500 years ago, people complained about information overload just like we do today? Or that some civilizations saw 70% of their population enslaved? Rudyard and Samo peel back the layers of history, revealing: The shocking similarities between ancient Athens and the Taliban Why California might be birthing new religions as we speak How deforestation toppled empires (and why it matters now) From psychedelic Greek philosophers to the eerie parallels between Polish-Lithuanian and Cambodian history, this episode is a mind-bending tour of humanity's greatest triumphs and strangest quirks.
In this episode of The Cognitive Revolution, Nathan interviews Samo Burja, founder of Bismarck Analysis, on the strategic dynamics of artificial intelligence through a geopolitical lens. They discuss AI's trajectory, the chip supply chain, US-China relations, and the challenges of AI safety and militarization. Samo Burja brings both geopolitical expertise and technological sophistication to these critical topics, offering insights on balancing innovation, security, and international cooperation. Apply to join over 400 Founders and Execs in the Turpentine Network: https://www.turpentinenetwork.co/ RECOMMENDED PODCAST: 1 to 100 | Hypergrowth Companies Worth Joining. Every week we sit down with the founder of a hyper-growth company you should consider joining. Our goal is to give you the inside story behind breakout, early stage companies potentially worth betting your career on. This season, discover how the founders of Modal Labs, Clay, Mercor, and more built their products, cultures, and companies. Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1762756034 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/70NOWtWDY995C8qDqojxGw RECOMMENDED PODCAST: Live Players with Samo Burja. The "Live Players" podcast is where Samo Burja and Erik Torenberg chart the key individuals shaping our future from first principles. Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/live-players-with-samo-burja-and-erik-torenberg/id1718925188 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5fbMTkHBnom1JIBWYNVBK1 Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfeXnCXKrCPMvoPla0j7TYQ SPONSORS: Oracle: Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is a single platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, and AI needs. OCI has four to eight times the bandwidth of other clouds; offers one consistent price, and nobody does data better than Oracle. If you want to do more and spend less, take a free test drive of OCI at https://oracle.com/cognitive Brave: The Brave search API can be used to assemble a data set to train your AI models and help with retrieval augmentation at the time of inference. All while remaining affordable with developer first pricing, integrating the Brave search API into your workflow translates to more ethical data sourcing and more human representative data sets. Try the Brave search API for free for up to 2000 queries per month at https://bit.ly/BraveTCR Omneky: Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off https://www.omneky.com/ Squad: Head to Squad to access global engineering without the headache and at a fraction of the cost: head to https://choosesquad.com/ and mention “Turpentine” to skip the waitlist. CHAPTERS: (00:00:00) About the Show (00:00:22) About the Episode (00:03:48) Introduction and AI Worldview (00:06:20) Progress in AI Science and Engineering (00:09:24) Theory of AI Progress (00:12:00) AI Scientists vs Software Engineers (00:16:32) US-China Competition in AI (00:21:12) AI Research and Academia (00:21:28) Sponsors: Oracle | Brave (00:28:30) Different Forms of AI Intelligence (00:30:38) Mixture of AI Architectures (00:33:10) Sponsors: Omneky | Squad (00:34:36) US Strategy for AI Development (00:41:57) US-China Chip Ban and Industrial Policy (00:50:22) US-China AI Conflict and Cooperation (01:06:19) AI Safety and Minimizing Self-Other Distinction (01:16:54) Alternative Approach to US-China AI Relations (01:23:36) Outro
In this episode of Live Players, Erik Torenberg and Samo Burja are joined by Ben Landau-Taylor, a Senior Analyst at Bismarck Analysis. Ben recently published an article in Palladium Magazine about the pervasive problem of fraud in academia. They discussed how fraudulent activities, particularly in medical research, often go undetected due to flawed peer review processes and institutional protectionism. They explore key cases, and possible solutions, including external watchdogs, intellectual authorities and regulatory bodies in maintaining academic integrity.
Samo Burja is the founder and President of Bismarck Analysis, an organization that helps companies, governments, philanthropists, and investors better understand the world in which we all live and operate. He discusses the consequences of world mass migrations to countries that do not have a history of assimilation, inverted demographics, technological collapse, and much more. PLEASE SUBSCRIBE LIKE AND SHARE THIS PODCAST!!! Video Version of Show Rumble- https://rumble.com/v5b570l-coffee-and-a-mike-samo-burja-bronze-age-collapse.html Follow Samo X- https://x.com/SamoBurja Website- https://brief.bismarckanalysis.com/ Follow Me Twitter/X- https://twitter.com/CoffeeandaMike Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/coffeeandamike/ Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/CoffeeandaMike/ Truth Social- https://truthsocial.com/@coffeeandamike Gettr- https://gettr.com/user/coffeeandamike Rumble- https://rumble.com/search/all?q=coffee%20and%20a%20mike Apple Podcasts- https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/coffee-and-a-mike/id1436799008 Support My Work Venmo- https://venmo.com/code?user_id=3570365208987017385&created=1658667789.4661531&printed=1 Locals- https://coffeeandamike.locals.com/ Website- www.coffeeandamike.com Email- info@coffeeandamike.com Sponsors Independence Ark Natural Farming- https://www.independenceark.com/
### Podcast Title "Navigating Complex Systems: From Software Engineering to Real Estate" ### Summary In this episode of Narratives, host William Jarvis is joined by co-host Lars Doucet and special guest Patrick McKenzie. Patrick shares his journey from moving to Japan due to a misleading Wall Street Journal article to becoming a notable figure in the software engineering world, eventually working at Stripe and now advising and writing about financial infrastructure. The conversation delves into the state of the software engineering job market, the impact of large language models, and why Patrick believes the market is healthier than many think. Patrick discusses his method for arriving at contrarian viewpoints and the importance of revisiting past predictions to learn from them. Patrick also shares fascinating insights into how his father, a real estate acquisition specialist, taught him to "read the street" and understand the factors influencing business locations, particularly for companies like Walgreens. This leads to a broader discussion on the complexities of regulatory environments and how to navigate them, especially in highly regulated industries like property tax assessment and healthcare. The episode wraps up with advice for startups working in regulated industries, emphasizing the need to balance understanding the regulatory landscape while maintaining the drive to create value. Patrick's experience with the vaccinateCA initiative during the COVID-19 pandemic showcases how quickly adding state capacity can lead to significant improvements in public services. ### Podcast Notes **Introduction:** - Host: William Jarvis - Co-host: Lars Doucet - Guest: Patrick McKenzie **Key Topics Covered:** 1. **Patrick's Background:** - Moving to Japan based on a Wall Street Journal article. - Professional journey: Japanese salaryman, startup experience, joining Stripe, and current advisory and newsletter work. 2. **State of the Software Engineering Market:** - Misconceptions from the past and present. - Impact of large language models on the job market. - The ongoing need for skilled engineers despite technological advancements. 3. **Methodology for Arriving at Contrarian Views:** - Importance of reviewing past predictions. - Learning from mistakes and maintaining an evidence-based approach. 4. **Real Estate Insights from Patrick's Father:** - Understanding why certain locations are chosen for businesses. - The difference between destination and non-destination locations. - Sociological and logistical factors influencing real estate decisions. 5. **Navigating Regulatory Environments:** - Balancing empathy and effectiveness in highly regulated industries. - Avoiding regulatory capture while striving for positive change. - Lessons from working at Stripe and the vaccinateCA initiative. 6. **Advice for Startups in Regulated Industries:** - Understanding the incentive structures and constraints of participants. - Maintaining focus on creating value. - The importance of adding state capacity and being adaptable. **Conclusion:** - Patrick's contact information and where to find his work. **Sponsor Acknowledgment:** - Special thanks to Bismarck Analysis for their support. - Mention of the Bismarck Brief newsletter. This episode provides valuable insights into the software engineering market, real estate dynamics, and practical advice for navigating regulatory environments, making it a must-listen for anyone interested in these fields.
Jim talks with Samo Burja about lessons military strategists should take from the Russo-Ukrainian War so far. They discuss why military stockpiles are less useful than previously assumed, the scaling up of drone production, the impossibility of envisioning what tech will be needed, 4 factors that caused Russian miscalculation, offensive vs defensive dominance, the possibility of a U.S. military draft, the changing role of conscription, the high average age in Russia & Ukraine, the rapid evolution of drones, a comparison between drone pilots & snipers, the muted relevance of the air force, empty symbols of military strength, the progress of autonomous drones, the reevaluation of civilian casualties with changing tech, the information complexity of drone warfare, the importance of artillery, the need for a new George Marshall figure in the U.S., a war of production, how the Ukraine War can inform the Taiwan situation, the idea of an amphibious assault, autonomous submersible vehicles, and much more. JRS EP 243 - Yaroslav Trofimov on Ukraine's War of Independence JRS EP 221 - George Hotz on Open-Source Driving Assistance Samo Burja is the founder and President of Bismarck Analysis, a consulting firm that specializes in institutional analysis for clients in North America and Europe. Bismarck uses the foundational sociological research that Samo and his team have conducted over the past decade to deliver unique insights to clients about institutional design and strategy. Samo's studies focus on the social and material technologies that provide the foundation for healthy human societies, with an eye to engineering and restoring the structures that produce functional institutions. He has authored articles and papers on his findings. His manuscript, Great Founder Theory, is available online. He is also a Research Fellow at the Long Now Foundation and Senior Research Fellow in Political Science at the Foresight Institute. Samo has spoken about his findings at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Y Combinator's YC 120 conference, the Reboot American Innovation conference in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere. He spends most of his time in California and his native Slovenia.
Why did Rome fall? What can we learn from past civilization collapses to protect our own? How do we fix our Institutions? In this Win-Win episode I speak to Samo Burja - a leading geopolitical analyst and founder of the intelligence brief Bismarck Analysis. Samo is a prolific writer on nature of power, leadership, bureaucracy and governance. If you're worried about the health of our institutions and sense-making, this is the episode for you. Chapters 00:00:00 - Intro 00:01:40 - Common Themes of Historical Civilizations 00:05:13 - Loss of Knowledge 00:13:38 - Impact of Demographic Collapse 00:17:06 - Indigenous Knowledge Loss 00:21:13 - Role of Institutions 00:24:01 - The Succession Problem & Knowledge Loss 00:38:34 - Bureaucracy and Goodhart's Law 00:45:52 - Democracy and Monarchy 00:50:44 - Sensemaking & AI 01:07:13 - Building New Civilizational Games 01:23:27 - Great Founder Theory 01:33:34 - What Makes a Great Founder? 01:38:53 - How to Avoid Getting Drunk on Power 01:44:50 - Democratization of Technology & Vulnerable Worlds 01:53:52 - Geopolitical Predictions Links ♾️ Bismarck Brief https://brief.bismarckanalysis.com/ ♾️ Samo's Website https://samoburja.com/ ♾️ Samo's Youtube https://www.youtube.com/@UC4QYBbgLkGaULStiC5yc_1Q Credits ♾️ Hosted by Liv Boeree ♾️ Produced by Raymond Wei ♾️ Edit and Audio Mix by Ryan Kessler The Win-Win Podcast: Poker champion Liv Boeree takes to the interview chair to tease apart the complexities of one of the most fundamental parts of human nature: competition. Liv is joined by top philosophers, gamers, artists, technologists, CEOs, scientists, athletes and more to understand how competition manifests in their world, and how to change seemingly win-lose games into Win-Wins.
✍︎: The Curious Worldview Newsletter - the ultimate compliment to the podcast...Russ Roberts – Taleb & HitchensScott Patterson – Taleb & Chaos KingsMagnus Ranstorp – Terrorism & Political ViolenceJames Robinson – Why Nations FailFollow me on Instagram - @ryanfhoggSamo Burja founded Bismarck Analysis, of which Bismarck Brief has spun off, which is a consulting and research firm that investigates the political and institutional landscape of society. I've listened to and read hundreds of hours of Samo Burja. He's prolific both in writing and talking, and applies an academic analysis to express his interests. His interests are those which overlap with mine, and as such, should as well overlap with yours since you have selected this podcast. He's been on my list of dream guests ever since this podcast began, and so it was a huge thrill to get a chance to finally record something with him. 00:00 – Who Is Samo Burja01:47 – Central Thread Of Samo's Work – Why Groups Thrive & Fail16:57 – 80/20 Principle In Organisations & New York Times Family Ownership22:17 – Solving For Nepotism25:53 – The Wallenberg Family of Sweden47:13 – Nassim Taleb Informed Your Worldview & Others51:17 – The Role Of Serendipity & Country You're Bullish On
Thanks to Eli Lifland, Molly Hickman, Değer Turan, and Evan Miyazono for reviewing drafts of this post. The opinions expressed here are my own. Summary: Forecasters produce reasons and models that are often more valuable than the final forecasts Most of this value is being lost due to the historical practice & incentives of forecasting, and the difficulty of crowds to “adversarially collaborate” FutureSearch is a forecasting system with legible reasons and models at its core (examples at the end) The Curious Case of the Missing Reasoning Ben Landau-Taylor of Bismarck Analysis wrote a piece on March 6 called “Probability Is Not A Substitute For Reasoning”, citing a piece where he writes: There has been a great deal of research on what criteria must be met for forecasting aggregations to be useful, and as Karger, Atanasov, and Tetlock argue, predictions of events such as the arrival of AGI [...] ---Outline:(00:40) The Curious Case of the Missing Reasoning(05:06) Those Who Seek Rationales, And Those Who Do Not(07:21) So What Do Elite Forecasters Actually Know?(10:30) The Rationale-Shaped Hole At The Heart Of Forecasting(11:51) Facts: Cite Your Sources(12:07) Reasons: So You Think You Can Persuade With Words(14:25) Models: So You Think You Can Model the World(17:56) There Is No Microeconomics of AGI(19:39) 700 AI questions you say? Aren't We In the Age of AI Forecasters?(21:33) Towards “Towards Rationality Engines”(23:10) Sample Forecasts With Reasons and Models--- First published: April 2nd, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/qMP7LcCBFBEtuA3kL/the-rationale-shaped-hole-at-the-heart-of-forecasting --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Today on Unsupervised Learning, Razib talks to long-time podcast favorite Samo Burja. Burja is the founder of Bismarck Analysis and Bismarck Brief, a Research Fellow at the Long Now Foundation and The Foresight Institute. He is also now the chair of the editorial board of Palladium Magazine. Already a four-time guest on Unsupervised Learning (he has previously shared his views on China's future, Russia's present and archaeology's past, his role at Bismarck Analysis and geopolitical uncertainty, reflected on his piece in Palladium on Finding "lost civilizations" and covered his ideas on "social technology," China, and the foreign view of America), the Slovenian-born Burja is one of the most original and incisive public intellectuals writing in America today. His 2021 piece, Why Civilization is Older than We Thought, brings a level of depth and rigor to historical heterodoxy that you rarely find anymore. Burja has also forwarded the “great founder theory” of historical change and formulated the idea of “live players” in social analysis. In this episode, Razib asks Burja for his sense of the world landscape in early 2024, revisiting conversations that delve into logistical details of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the future of Chinese power. Burja continues to be pessimistic about the long-term prospects of European and Ukrainian resistance to a Russian war-machine that is geared toward grinding its way through lengthy battles of attrition. He also asserts that the current bearish attitude toward Chinese power is short-sighted, arguing that Western media in particular understates the technological and economic achievements of the PRC over the last generation. Burja believes that even if the “China bulls” were overly optimistic, the “China bears” go to excess in the opposite direction. Finally, he touches upon his vision for Palladium Magazine, a publication he has long contributed to, and which he now helms.
In this episode Erik Torenberg and Samo Burja discuss the current state and future state of America, China, Russia, Ukraine, energy, the US dollar, AI, Peter Zeihan, Balaji Srinivasan, and more. This episode was recorded in 2023 for the Upstream podcast - before the two started Live Players. Head to https://brave.com/brave-ads/ and mention “MoZ” when signing up for a 25% discount on your first campaign. -- This show is produced by Turpentine: a network of podcasts, newsletters, and more, covering technology, business, and culture — all from the perspective of industry insiders and experts. We're launching new shows every week, and we're looking for industry-leading sponsors — if you think that might be you and your company, email us at erik@turpentine.co. -- SPONSOR: BRAVE Get first-party targeting with Brave's private ad platform: cookieless and future proof ad formats for all your business needs. Performance meets privacy. Head to https://brave.com/brave-ads/ and mention “MoZ” when signing up for a 25% discount on your first campaign. -- LINKS: Samo's Bismarck Brief: https://brief.bismarckanalysis.com/ -- Timestamps: (00:00) Episode preview (00:58) Who's right: Balaji, Zeihan, or Olson? (05:00) Why China's prospects aren't as bad as Zeihan thinks (07:28) What have we learned one year out after Ukraine? (11:15) Future of The U.S. dollar (13:11) Sponsor: Turpentine | Brave (13:10) Balaji's Bet (14:57) Future of America (19:20) Why Brazil hasn't panned out (21:00) Is AI communist and crypto libertarian (26:53) Evolution of elites (31:04) Comparing Elon and SBF (33:29) Economics of automation and AI (37:23) How intellectual culture has changed (45:07) America and China converging (47:27) Startup cities vs incumbents (50:14) Bismarck Analysis (52:56) Samo's upcoming research interests (55:04) Wrap
Jim talks with Samo Burja about the ideas in his recent article "Geothermal Energy Turns Planets Into Power Sources." They discuss the heat beneath the earth's surface, contributors to the heat, technological dependency between fracking & geothermal, the math of electricity, earthquake risk, the limits of current geology, the value of better drilling tech, new approaches to drilling, gyrotrons, plasma torches, whether our civilization actually needs more energy, the local optimum of fossil fuels, bureaucratic incentives in energy, investment of social surplus, scientific welfare, metascience, giving academic tenure to brilliant 25-year-olds, a defense-favoring military epoch, the math of geothermal vs other combinations of energy sources, visions of a clean-energy future, and much more. Episode Transcript "Geothermal Energy Turns Planets Into Power Sources," by Samo Burja JRS EP117 - Samo Burja on Societal Decline JRS EP125 - Samo Burja on Socetial Decline: Part 2 JRS EP222 - Trent McConaghy on AI & Brain-Computer Interface Accelerationism (bci/acc) Samo Burja is the founder and President of Bismarck Analysis, a consulting firm that specializes in institutional analysis for clients in North America and Europe. Bismarck uses the foundational sociological research that Samo and his team have conducted over the past decade to deliver unique insights to clients about institutional design and strategy. Samo's studies focus on the social and material technologies that provide the foundation for healthy human societies, with an eye to engineering and restoring the structures that produce functional institutions. He has authored articles and papers on his findings. His manuscript, Great Founder Theory, is available online. He is also a Research Fellow at the Long Now Foundation and Senior Research Fellow in Political Science at the Foresight Institute. Samo has spoken about his findings at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Y Combinator's YC 120 conference, the Reboot American Innovation conference in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere. He spends most of his time in California and his native Slovenia.
In this episode, Erik sits down with Samo Burja, political scientist and founder of Bismarck Analysis. They discuss Samo's term "live player" and today's live players, including Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and George Soros. Make informed decision for high impact donations with GiveWell, which is offering Upstream listeners donation matching up to $100. To claim your match, go to www.givewell.org ➡️ pick “Podcast” enter "Upstream with Erik Torenberg" at checkout. -- We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com. -- RELATED PODCAST Join host Samo Burja and Erik Torenberg as they analyze the mindsets of today's most intriguing business leaders, investors, and innovators through the lens of their bold actions and contrarian worldviews. You'll come away with a deeper understanding of the development of technology, business, political power, culture and more. Listen to Live Players: https://link.chtbl.com/liveplayers. -- SPONSORS: Shopify: https://shopify.com/torenberg for a $1/month trial period Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of all ecommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries. From their all-in-one ecommerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/torenberg. GiveWell: https://www.givewell.org/ Have you ever wondered where your donation could have the most impact? GiveWell has now spent over 15 years researching charitable organizations and only directs funding to the HIGHEST-IMPACT opportunities they've found in global health and poverty alleviation. Make informed decisions about high-impact giving. If you've never donated through GiveWell before, you can have your donation matched up to $100 before the end of the year, or as long as matching funds last. To claim your match, go to https://www.givewell.org/ and pick “Podcast” and enter "Upstream with Erik Torenberg" at checkout. -- X / TWITTER: @SamoBurja (Samo) @eriktorenberg (Erik) @upstream__pod @turpentinemedia -- TIMESTAMPS: (00:00) Episode Preview (01:50) What are "live players?" (05:05) Samo's worldview (10:35) Reflections on the energy transition (15:35) Sponsor: Shopify | Givewell (18:40) Sam Altman as a live player (22:25) OpenAI's culture vs Microsoft's culture (25:45) Sam Altman vs Elon Musk vs Peter Thiel (30:35) Sponsor: Oracle (32:40) Understanding different perspectives on capitalism (33:45) The role of live players in society (38:05) Can we train live players? (43:20) The evolution of live players (48:10) Philanthropists as live players: Bill Gates, the Kochs, etc (55:50) The paradox of open society advocates -- Upstream is a production from Turpentine Producer: Sam Kaufman Editor: Graham Bessellieu For guest or sponsorship inquiries please contact Sam@turpentine.co
Samo Burja is a research fellow at the Long Now Foundation, the founder of Bismarck Analysis, and originator of the Great Founder theory, who is driven by a simple question. Why have all prior civilizations failed, and how can ours escape the same fate? Our conversation focuses on the ways in which getting good data is almost impossible. Civilizations rise, fall, and their skeletons get scavenged to nourish what comes next. Floods sweep the landscape clean of the best laid plans, and rising sea levels bury the rest. We talk about the future of the academy, the search for buried treasures, and informed searches for long-lost cultures. Note - we had some technical difficulties at the end here, and so the audio for the last 20 minutes is pretty choppy. Apologies! We're working on making sure it doesn't happen again. Support the scientific revolution by joining our Patreon: https://bit.ly/3lcAasB Tell us what you think in the comments or on our Discord: https://discord.gg/MJzKT8CQub Check our short-films channel, @DemystifySci: https://www.youtube.com/c/DemystifyingScience AND our material science investigations of atomics, @MaterialAtomics https://www.youtube.com/@MaterialAtomics Join our mailing list https://bit.ly/3v3kz2S PODCAST INFO: Anastasia completed her PhD studying bioelectricity at Columbia University. When not talking to brilliant people or making movies, she spends her time painting, reading, and guiding backcountry excursions. Shilo also did his PhD at Columbia studying the elastic properties of molecular water. When he's not in the film studio, he's exploring sound in music. They are both freelance professors at various universities. - Blog: http://DemystifySci.com/blog - RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/2be66934/podcast/rss - Donate: https://bit.ly/3wkPqaD - Swag: https://bit.ly/2PXdC2y SOCIAL: - Discord: https://discord.gg/MJzKT8CQub - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/DemystifySci - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/DemystifySci/ - Twitter: https://twitter.com/DemystifySci MUSIC: -Shilo Delay: https://g.co/kgs/oty671
Erik sits down with political scientist Samo Burja ( @SamoBurja ) who founded Bismarck Analysis, a consulting firm that analyzes institutions (ranging from governments to companies). Samo is one of the most interesting and wide-ranging thinkers today. In this episode, they discuss the current state and future state of America, China, Russia, Ukraine, energy, the US dollar, AI, and more. If you're looking for an ERP platform, check out our sponsor, NetSuite: http://netsuite.com/UPSTREAM -- We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com. RECOMMENDED PODCAST: Every week investor and writer of the popular newsletter The Diff, Byrne Hobart, and co-host Erik Torenberg discuss today's major inflection points in technology, business, and markets – and help listeners build a diversified portfolio of trends and ideas for the future. Subscribe to “The Riff” with Byrne Hobart and Erik Torenberg: https://link.chtbl.com/theriff TIMESTAMPS: (00:00) Episode preview (03:05) Who's right: Balaji, Zeihan, or Olson? (07:18) Why China's prospects aren't as bad as Zeihan thinks (09:46) What have we learned one year out after Ukraine? (13:12) Future of The U.S. dollar (15:19) Sponsors: Secureframe (17:03) Balaji's Bet (17:42) Future of America (22:06) Why Brazil hasn't panned out (26:34) Is AI communist and crypto libertarian (29:37) Evolution of elites (33:40) Comparing Elon and SBF (36:12) Economics of automation and AI (41:28) How intellectual culture has changed (43:39) America exporting Western values (47:42) America and China converging (50:00) Startup cities vs incumbents (52:54) Samo's consultancy (55:35) Samo's upcoming research interests TWITTER: Erik's Twitter: @eriktorenberg Samo's Twitter: @samoburja Please support our sponsors: Shopify | Secureframe -Shopify: https://shopify.com/torenberg for a $1/month trial period Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of all ecommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries. From their all-in-one ecommerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/torenberg. - Secureframe: https://secureframe.com/ Secureframe is the leading all-in-one platform for security and privacy compliance. Get SOC-2 audit ready in weeks, not months. I believe in Secureframe so much that I invested in it, and I recommend it to all my portfolio companies. Sign up for a free demo and mention UPSTREAM during your demo to get 20% off your first year. Secureframe has just released Secureframe Trust, a new product that lets you showcase your organization's security posture to build customer trust.
Hi everyone and welcome, I'm Tom Green, your host for this episode of This Is Robotics, and your fellow companion on one of the most incredible journeys in human history: robotics.Thanks so much for tuning us in today. March 20th, at 5:24 p.m. EDT) spring rolled in. It's that time of year when the ground begins to thaw, birds return, and many vendors introduce their outdoor robots. Outdoors meaning robots for backyards, construction sites, farms, and major infrastructure projects most everywhere. In short, it's springtime for robots.In honor of March, we'll review some of these new spring robots for 2023. Renovate Robotics, Swap Robotics, Built Robotics, and GlüxKind. Then, we're off to Korea as Korea makes its $177 billion move at becoming a robotics kingpin: trying to be the third or fourth-largest producer of robots worldwide, as well as making a strong move on leadership in artificial intelligence. Big things are happening in Korea, and robotics will be a direct beneficiary of Korea's remarkable plan for AI leadership, not only in East Asia and Asia…but the entire globe. Articles in Asian Robotics Review: Major Growth Spurt Ahead for Korean Robotics 2023-2026 Korea could leapfrog competition through integration of robotics, AI/ML, and ICT Korea's Plan for AI/ML Dominance...Brilliant! Korea looks to ramp up artificial intelligence and converge with recent successes in robotics (6x growth from 2009 to 2016). Can Korea pull it off?Our last two segments for this episode ask the question: What happened? Generative AI: Finally, America Gets a Real Wake-up CallIn 1983, the United States had 50-plus manufacturers of industrial robots. Today there are zero…as in none! Well, excepting for the recent one ABB in 2015 (Swiss/Swedish conglomerate) built in Michigan. Americans are left to "assembling" other peoples' robots. Even though the U.S invented robots. What if there's a supply-chain fiasco preventing shipments? Or worse, what if embargos from US alliances make it impossible to import from Germany, Japan, Italy or China.? What has that mean't for manufacturing in the U.S. today? Will America's logistics go the same way as industrial robots.Between 2000 and 2010, the US lost one-third of its manufacturing jobs. The US remains the second-largest manufacturing country in the world, but its global dominance has been well and truly lost.What happened? And is this decline a harbinger of what Generative AI might do in the very near future? We'll let you know what the leadership of DHL, a company that ships 5 billion packages annually, says about the situation.Finally, our last news report: Machine Tool Kingpins: Germany, Japan & China Machine tools keys to the future of global manufacturing. See also Asian Robotics Review news report and free downloadable PDF from Bismarck Analysis on machine tools. The Importance of Machine Tools To Have and Have Not: Advanced Manufacturing's Most Important Skill
This week, we're celebrating our recent tenth show with a double-header. Breaking out of the usual format, we have an interview with a thought leader, plus a special listener Q&A with Ladsie & Boysie themselves, Andrew Collingwood and Philip Pilkington, featuring another very unusual guest. Today is part one of that double-header. We're delighted to welcome Samo Burja to the pod. Samo is a sociologist who has risen to prominence on the analyst scene in the past few years, mainly via his popular and influential Substack. A fellow at the The Long Now Foundation, and senior research fellow at Foresight Institute, his Bismarck Analysis consultancy deals in the geopolitics, technology, demographic and cultural trends that will define the 21st century. He analyses at the scale of 'mega-trends', and has contributed a range of useful coinages to the lexicon, from "Intellectual Dark Matter", to "Live And Dead Players". Naturally, the lads have plenty to dig into - from China's deliberately backwards agricultural policy, to the diplomatic fulcrum that might be breaking Europe away from the US.
This remains my favorite episode, despite Samo's squeaky chair and some audio misses. We discuss ideas that have made a profound impact on my thinking, such as narrative hedging, the Bismarckian compromise, and energy leaps. This may sound like it was recorded last week with the insightful observations on energy and geopolitical conflict, but it was actually recorded nearly a year ago, at the end of April, and releasing in the middle of May.Samo Burja is the founder and president of the consulting company Bismarck Analysis, a Research Fellow at the Long Now Foundation and a Senior Research Fellow in Political Science at the Foresight Institute. He is also the writer of the Bismarck Brief newsletter, linked below.In this podcast, we discuss the life of Otto Von Bismarck, the political economy of institutions, narratives as a hedge against failure, the coming energy transition, differences between Europe and America, regulation as vengeance, live players, Elon Musk, and the global financial system.Bismarck Analysis:https://www.bismarckanalysis.com/#/Bismarck Brief: Samo Burja on Twitter:https://twitter.com/SamoBurjaThe Costs of European “Privacy” Regulation:https://www.nber.org/papers/w30028EU Artificial Intelligence law:https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/05/13/1052223/guide-ai-act-europe/Great founder theory:https://samoburja.com/great-founder-theory/ Get full access to From the New World at cactus.substack.com/subscribe
LABOSSIERE PODCAST ✓ Claimed Podcast Notes Key Takeaways The long-term legacy of your contribution to society is bounded to the fate of the society you are in Figuring out why societies fail will help humans take measures to mitigate such failures and allow human contributions to compound over generationsEven though everyone wants their society to succeed, their individual incentives might encourage them to work against other members of the same societyHuman history is a stuttering arc of progress where civilizations rise, achieve some sort of peak, and ultimately fail, and then another civilization picks up the remnants and start againProviding a useful information inheritance is the best thing we can do for future generationsAn immortal society is a boundless society where almost all human effort can compound and accumulate over time Societies that celebrate their most successful outliers will generate people who are capable of solving their hardest problemsThe collapse of civilization includes a massive decline in population, material wealth, and human knowledge Societies that undergo stagnation and forgo growth have a compounding risk of collapse over time The Great Founder Theory: a small, exceptional group of people are ultimately responsible for the creation of new institutions that drive growth and innovation across a society A great founder must operate within a social reality so he is not disconnected from society, but also be differentiated enough so that is not just like everyone elseOn live versus dead players: A live player is a person or well-coordinated group of people that is able to do things they have not done before, whereas a dead player operates off of a script and is incapable of doing new thingsThe ability to successfully jump career tracks is evidence of being a live playerExamples include Arnold Schwarzenegger and Elon Musk People are not paying enough attention to our aging population; an old population is less capable of dealing with the changes demanded by technology Read the full notes @ podcastnotes.orgSamo Burja is the founder of Bismarck Analysis, a consulting firm that investigates the political and institutional landscape of society. He's also a Research Fellow at the Long Now Foundation where he studies how institutions can endure for centuries and millennia.Samo is also Senior Research Fellow in Political Science at the Foresight Institute, where he advises how institutions can shape the future of technology.He writes and speaks on history, institutions, and strategy with a focus on exceptional leaders that create new social and political forms. He's systematized this approach as “Great Founder Theory.”
LABOSSIERE PODCAST ✓ Claimed Podcast Notes Key Takeaways The long-term legacy of your contribution to society is bounded to the fate of the society you are in Figuring out why societies fail will help humans take measures to mitigate such failures and allow human contributions to compound over generationsEven though everyone wants their society to succeed, their individual incentives might encourage them to work against other members of the same societyHuman history is a stuttering arc of progress where civilizations rise, achieve some sort of peak, and ultimately fail, and then another civilization picks up the remnants and start againProviding a useful information inheritance is the best thing we can do for future generationsAn immortal society is a boundless society where almost all human effort can compound and accumulate over time Societies that celebrate their most successful outliers will generate people who are capable of solving their hardest problemsThe collapse of civilization includes a massive decline in population, material wealth, and human knowledge Societies that undergo stagnation and forgo growth have a compounding risk of collapse over time The Great Founder Theory: a small, exceptional group of people are ultimately responsible for the creation of new institutions that drive growth and innovation across a society A great founder must operate within a social reality so he is not disconnected from society, but also be differentiated enough so that is not just like everyone elseOn live versus dead players: A live player is a person or well-coordinated group of people that is able to do things they have not done before, whereas a dead player operates off of a script and is incapable of doing new thingsThe ability to successfully jump career tracks is evidence of being a live playerExamples include Arnold Schwarzenegger and Elon Musk People are not paying enough attention to our aging population; an old population is less capable of dealing with the changes demanded by technology Read the full notes @ podcastnotes.orgSamo Burja is the founder of Bismarck Analysis, a consulting firm that investigates the political and institutional landscape of society. He's also a Research Fellow at the Long Now Foundation where he studies how institutions can endure for centuries and millennia.Samo is also Senior Research Fellow in Political Science at the Foresight Institute, where he advises how institutions can shape the future of technology.He writes and speaks on history, institutions, and strategy with a focus on exceptional leaders that create new social and political forms. He's systematized this approach as “Great Founder Theory.”
LABOSSIERE PODCAST ✓ Claimed : Read the notes at at podcastnotes.org. Don't forget to subscribe for free to our newsletter, the top 10 ideas of the week, every Monday --------- Samo Burja is the founder of Bismarck Analysis, a consulting firm that investigates the political and institutional landscape of society. He's also a Research Fellow at the Long Now Foundation where he studies how institutions can endure for centuries and millennia.Samo is also Senior Research Fellow in Political Science at the Foresight Institute, where he advises how institutions can shape the future of technology.He writes and speaks on history, institutions, and strategy with a focus on exceptional leaders that create new social and political forms. He's systematized this approach as “Great Founder Theory.”
Samo Burja is the founder of Bismarck Analysis, a consulting firm that investigates the political and institutional landscape of society. He's also a Research Fellow at the Long Now Foundation where he studies how institutions can endure for centuries and millennia.Samo is also Senior Research Fellow in Political Science at the Foresight Institute, where he advises how institutions can shape the future of technology.He writes and speaks on history, institutions, and strategy with a focus on exceptional leaders that create new social and political forms. He's systematized this approach as “Great Founder Theory.”
Samo Burja is a sociologist and the founder of Bismarck Analysis, a firm that analyzes institutions, from governments to companies. His research work focuses on the causes of societal decay and flourishing and he writes on history, epistemology and strategy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This week, we have Samo Burja from Bismarck Analysis. Topics discussed: Bronze Age Collapse Minaon Crete Nuclear War Links mentioned in this episode: https://samoburja.com/ https://www.bismarckanalysis.com/#/ This podcast is hosted by ZenCast.fm
Samo Burja is the founder and president of the consulting company Bismarck Analysis, a Research Fellow at the Long Now Foundation and a Senior Research Fellow in Political Science at the Foresight Institute. He is also the writer of the Bismarck Brief newsletter, linked below.In this podcast, we discuss the life of Otto Von Bismarck, the political economy of institutions, narratives as a hedge against failure, the coming energy transition, differences between Europe and America, regulation as vengeance, live players, Elon Musk, and the global financial system.Bismarck Analysis:https://www.bismarckanalysis.com/#/Bismarck Brief: Samo Burja on Twitter:https://twitter.com/SamoBurjaThe Costs of European “Privacy” Regulation:https://www.nber.org/papers/w30028EU Artificial Intelligence law:https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/05/13/1052223/guide-ai-act-europe/Great founder theory:https://samoburja.com/great-founder-theory/ This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cactus.substack.com
On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib welcomes back Samo Burja, a guest who needs no introduction for long-time listeners. Burja is the podcast's first third-time guest, and with good reason. Previously, he came on to discuss social technology and China and lost civilizations, plumbing the depths of the human past for insights about the present and future. Today Burja spotlights a timely new venture of his firm, Bismark Analysis: the Bismarck Brief newsletter, which provides a taste of the sort of “deep-dive” analyses Bujra provides clients (Drone Adoption Favors Quantity Over Quality In Warfare, The German Retreat From Nuclear Power and Modern Russia Can Fight And Win Land Wars). He discusses the analytic model undergirding the Bismarck Brief, the idea of “live players,” individuals and institutions that can innovate and direct actions in surprising and novel ways, and “dead players,” who tend to operate in a rote manner following predictable scripts, and struggle to meet new challenges. A new start-up in a phase of expansion is a live player, disrupting the marketplace and transforming the notion of what is possible, like Google in 2000. In contrast, Google in 2022 is arguably a dead player, squeezing massive profits out of its capture of online advertising via search, but no longer transforming any sector of the economy. The remainder of the episode shifts to the details of Burja's analytic process, and his thoughts at the time in February 2022 (when the episode was pre-recorded) on the impending Russian invasion of Ukraine, as well as the earlier performance of Russian military forces in Syria and elsewhere. Razib and Samo touch on the geopolitical consequences of Europe's energy dependence upon Russia, and its distortionary impact on German foreign policy. Because this episode was recorded before the Russian invasion that began on February 24th, 2022, Razib has circled back with Burja to record a bonus mini-episode tackling recent developments. That episode covers what the Russian invasion and the Western response might mean for the global order in the 21st century.
Freddie Sayers meets with Samo Burja.With Western powers increasingly united against Russia, we seem to be witnessing the end of the unipolar world. Financially, culturally and spiritually we have never been so bifurcated. Could this be the end of civilisation as we know it?To find a way through the big issues at stake, Freddie Sayers sat down with Samo Burja, a sociologist and the founder of Bismarck Analysis.Read the post article here See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
How will Russia's invasion of Ukraine shape the world for decades to come? Samo Burja is a geopolitical expert who has developed a reputation for bucking the conventional wisdom. In this conversation he makes his predictions for the future, explaining how he believes we are misunderstanding Russia, how China is playing an economic long game, and the lessons from history in understanding what will happen next. Bismarck Analysis: https://www.bismarckanalysis.com/ Check out Rebel Wisdom's deep dive newsletter on Ukraine: https://rebelwisdom.substack.com/p/sensemaking-russia-and-ukraine-rebel?s=w
Samo Burja returns to the podcast to talk with Vance about the evolving situation between Russia and Ukraine. Samo and Vance talk about what the Russians are thinking, how he believes the situation may continue to unfold, the fly on the wall that is China and more. Samo is a sociologist and the founder of Bismark Analysis, a firm that helps companies, governments, philanthropists, and investors in their vital role of maintaining and advancing our civilization.The conversation focuses on the differing perspectives of the conflict depending on which side of the border you are on. Vance and Samo discuss the need to keep all speech open, because it is good to know what the other side is thinking. Links from the Interview —Follow Samo on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SamoBurjaSamo's Website: https://samoburja.com/Bismarck Analysis: https://www.bismarckanalysis.com/#/Vance Crowe Podcast Links —Vance Crowe Podcast Website: https://www.vancecrowe.com/podcastYouTube Full Episodes: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCigB7W5bX_gCinJxev9WB8w/YouTube Clips: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJKKb66A5_4ZcsE-rKI24ygBuy a sweatshirt, T-shirt or mugs from the podcast! Check out the Articulate Ventures Merch Store: https://teespring.com/stores/thevancecrowepodcastSubscribe to the podcast for email notifications on new episodes, invites to events and other exclusive content — http://eepurl.com/gSTfk5ABOUT THE VANCE CROWE PODCAST — Vance Crowe interviews people with an expertise that you would want to know about, but might not think to ask. He prompts his guests to think about their work in novel ways, discusses how it applies to regular people and has fun sharing stories and experiences.SUPPORT THE PODCAST —Rate the Podcast | https://ratethispodcast.com/vcpJoin the Articulate Ventures Network | https://network.articulate.ventures/ —We are a patchwork of thinkers that want to articulate ideas in a forum where they can be respectfully challenged, improved and celebrated so that we can explore complex subjects, learn from those we disagree with and achieve our personal & professional goals.Contact Vance for a Talk | https://www.vancecrowe.com/ —Vance delivers speeches that reveal important aspects of human communication. Audiences are entertained, engaged, and leave feeling empowered to change something about the way they are communicating. Vance tells stories about his own experiences, discusses theories in ways that make them relatable and highlights interesting people, books, and media that the audience can learn even more from. Join the #ATCF Book Club | https://articulate.ventures/category/atcf-book-club
In this shorter episode of the Utilitarian Podcast, I talk with Samo Burja about the war in Ukraine. Samo is the founder of the geopolitical analysis firm Bismarck Analysis. We talk about Western sanctions and their effects of Russias relationship to China, what a remilitarization of Europe will mean, whether Putin will be able to control Ukraine, avoiding nuclear war, possible tactics for winning the war, potential diplomatic solutions, the longer term implications of this war, and the importance of European energy independence. TIMESTAMPS: [00:00:47] Overview of the situation [00:04:14] Sanctions - Russia and China [00:06:33] A remilitarized Europe [00:10:42] Will Putin be able to control Ukraine? [00:14:33] Insurgencies in Ukraine [00:16:23] Tactics for winning the war [00:22:23] Potential diplomatic solutions [00:24:12] Longer term implications [00:28:18] Energy independence
Samo Burja is a sociologist and the founder of Bismarck Analysis, a firm that analyzes institutions, from governments to companies. His research work focuses on the causes of societal decay and flourishing and he writes on history, epistemology and strategy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
1:14 - Russia-Ukraine: "Great Power Politics" and how Mimetic Warfare is shaping the conflict. 10:23 - Blue cities/states dump their COVID restrictions....and even vaccine mandates 18:56 - Biden's State of the Union - plays it safe....until he decides it's time to FUND the police 26:56 - Interview with Samo Burja: Founder of Bismarck Analysis and political risk/strategy expert. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
Ben Landau-Taylor is a senior researcher at Bismarck Analysis, where he focuses on power, industry, economics, and social dynamics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Samo Burja is the founder of Bismarck Analysis and a Research Fellow at the Long Now Foundation. Samo writes and speaks about history, institutions, and strategy, and he is the creator of the Great Founder Theory of history. Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/q_X13jNOQTk Samo's Twitter: https://twitter.com/SamoBurja Subscribe to Bismarck Brief: https://brief.bismarckanalysis.com/ My twitter: https://twitter.com/dwarkesh_sp My blog: https://dwarkeshpatel.com/ Timestamps: 0:00:00 Intro 0:00:17 Are individuals causally responsible for history? 0:04:34 Was Napoleon a great founder? 0:08:47 What can great founder theory predict? 0:11:17 How many live players are there? 0:15:40 Is the market full of live players? 0:18:37 How to cozy up to both sides? 0:22:58 How do you become an intellectual? 0:27:34 Aligning incentives for intellectuals 0:30:40 What makes someone a great founder? 0:39:29 Why is the centralized internet inevitable? 0:42:21 Samo and I debate odds of civilizational collapse 0:48:17 Is GDP fake? 0:56:52 The world only has 1.5 civilizations 0:59:32 Advice to effective altruists 1:02:30 Advice to young people
Our civilization is made up of countless individuals and pieces of material technology, which come together to form institutions and interdependent systems of logistics, development and production. These institutions and systems then store the knowledge required for their own renewal and growth.Samo Burja is a sociologist and the founder of Bismarck Analysis, a firm that analyzes institutions, from governments to companies. His research work focuses on the causes of societal decay and flourishing. He writes on history, epistemology and strategy.History shows us we are not safe from institutional collapse. Advances in technology mitigate some aspects, but produce their own risks. Agile institutions that make use of both social and technical knowledge not only mitigate such risks, but promise unprecedented human flourishing.This episode of the podcast investigates this landscape, evaluates our odds, and tries to plot a better course.Music: I Knew a Guy by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Session Summary: New Strengthening Civilization video and "How-to": create positive futures - Foresight Institute The Foresight Institute is a research organization and non-profit that supports the beneficial development of high-impact technologies. Since our founding in 1987 on a vision of guiding powerful technologies, we have continued to evolve into a many-armed organization that focuses on several fields of science and technology that are too ambitious for legacy institutions to support.Allison Duettmann is the president and CEO of Foresight Institute. She directs the Intelligent Cooperation, Molecular Machines, Biotech & Health Extension, Neurotech, and Space Programs, Fellowships, Prizes, and Tech Trees, and shares this work with the public. She founded Existentialhope.com, co-edited Superintelligence: Coordination & Strategy, co-authored Gaming the Future, and co-initiated The Longevity Prize. Apply to Foresight's virtual salons and in person workshops here!We are entirely funded by your donations. If you enjoy what we do please consider donating through our donation page.Visit our website for more content, or join us here:TwitterFacebookLinkedInEvery word ever spoken on this podcast is now AI-searchable using Fathom.fm, a search engine for podcasts. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Samo Burja is founder of Bismarck Analysis, a consulting firm that investigates the political and institutional landscape of society. He is also a research fellow at the LongNow Foundation, where he studies how institutions can endure for centuries and millennia, and a Senior Research Fellow in political science at the Foresight Institute where he advises on how institutions can shape the future of technology. Writer, speaker, and strategist. We discuss his Great Founder Theory, his hypothesis that “a small number of institutions founded by exceptional individuals for the core of society”; as well as the requisite infrastructure for complex thought that Samo says has almost entirely disappeared, and the causes of Western nations' decline in state capacity.
Read the full transcript here. What is "long" history? Why don't historians usually focus on what happened before recorded human history? What (if anything) is special about agriculture when it comes to the development of civilization? How far back does human civilization go, and why should we care? Have humans always been gardeners? What factors cause civilizations to crumble or thrive? Should we reboot standardized tests and college admissions every few decades so that measures don't become targets? Which destructive factors are particularly salient to modern human civilization? Why is there such a disconnect between our intuition that progress is inevitable and our knowledge that virtually all civilizations have collapsed in the past? In other words, what makes us think that we'll succeed where others have failed? How does a functional social institution differ from a failing one? What is the "great founder" theory?Samo Burja is the founder of Bismarck Analysis, a consulting firm that investigates the political and institutional landscape of society; a research fellow at the Long Now Foundation; and a senior research fellow in political science at the Foresight Institute. Samo's studies focus on the social and material technologies that provide the foundation for healthy human societies, with an eye to engineering and restoring the structures that produce functional institutions. He has authored articles and papers on his findings. His manuscript, Great Founder Theory, is available online. You can find him on Twitter at @samoburja, on YouTube at @samoburja, or on his website, samoburja.com. [Read more]
Read the full transcriptWhat is "long" history? Why don't historians usually focus on what happened before recorded human history? What (if anything) is special about agriculture when it comes to the development of civilization? How far back does human civilization go, and why should we care? Have humans always been gardeners? What factors cause civilizations to crumble or thrive? Should we reboot standardized tests and college admissions every few decades so that measures don't become targets? Which destructive factors are particularly salient to modern human civilization? Why is there such a disconnect between our intuition that progress is inevitable and our knowledge that virtually all civilizations have collapsed in the past? In other words, what makes us think that we'll succeed where others have failed? How does a functional social institution differ from a failing one? What is the "great founder" theory?Samo Burja is the founder of Bismarck Analysis, a consulting firm that investigates the political and institutional landscape of society; a research fellow at the Long Now Foundation; and a senior research fellow in political science at the Foresight Institute. Samo's studies focus on the social and material technologies that provide the foundation for healthy human societies, with an eye to engineering and restoring the structures that produce functional institutions. He has authored articles and papers on his findings. His manuscript, Great Founder Theory, is available online. You can find him on Twitter at @samoburja, on YouTube at @samoburja, or on his website, samoburja.com.
What is "long" history? Why don't historians usually focus on what happened before recorded human history? What (if anything) is special about agriculture when it comes to the development of civilization? How far back does human civilization go, and why should we care? Have humans always been gardeners? What factors cause civilizations to crumble or thrive? Should we reboot standardized tests and college admissions every few decades so that measures don't become targets? Which destructive factors are particularly salient to modern human civilization? Why is there such a disconnect between our intuition that progress is inevitable and our knowledge that virtually all civilizations have collapsed in the past? In other words, what makes us think that we'll succeed where others have failed? How does a functional social institution differ from a failing one? What is the "great founder" theory?Samo Burja is the founder of Bismarck Analysis, a consulting firm that investigates the political and institutional landscape of society; a research fellow at the Long Now Foundation; and a senior research fellow in political science at the Foresight Institute. Samo's studies focus on the social and material technologies that provide the foundation for healthy human societies, with an eye to engineering and restoring the structures that produce functional institutions. He has authored articles and papers on his findings. His manuscript, Great Founder Theory, is available online. You can find him on Twitter at @samoburja, on YouTube at @samoburja, or on his website, samoburja.com.
What is "long" history? Why don't historians usually focus on what happened before recorded human history? What (if anything) is special about agriculture when it comes to the development of civilization? How far back does human civilization go, and why should we care? Have humans always been gardeners? What factors cause civilizations to crumble or thrive? Should we reboot standardized tests and college admissions every few decades so that measures don't become targets? Which destructive factors are particularly salient to modern human civilization? Why is there such a disconnect between our intuition that progress is inevitable and our knowledge that virtually all civilizations have collapsed in the past? In other words, what makes us think that we'll succeed where others have failed? How does a functional social institution differ from a failing one? What is the "great founder" theory? Samo Burja is the founder of Bismarck Analysis, a consulting firm that investigates the political and institutional landscape of society; a research fellow at the Long Now Foundation; and a senior research fellow in political science at the Foresight Institute. Samo's studies focus on the social and material technologies that provide the foundation for healthy human societies, with an eye to engineering and restoring the structures that produce functional institutions. He has authored articles and papers on his findings. His manuscript, Great Founder Theory, is available online. You can find him on Twitter at @samoburja, on YouTube at @samoburja, or on his website, samoburja.com.
There has never been an immortal society. No matter how technologically advanced our own society is, it is unlikely to be an exception. In order to achieve a positive future that defies these odds, it is critical that we understand the hidden forces that shape society. To help us do that is today's guest, Samo Burja, a sociologist and the Founder of Bismarck Analysis, a consulting firm that investigates the political and institutional landscape of society. Samo is a Research Fellow at the Long Now Foundation, where he studies how institutions can endure for centuries and millennia, and a Senior Research Fellow in Political Science at the Foresight Institute, where he advises how institutions can shape the future of technology. He is also a writer and a sought-after speaker on history, institutions, and strategy, with a focus on exceptional leaders that create new social and political forms. He has systematized this approach as the Great Founder Theory, which he shares with us today. Listening in, you'll find out why Samo believes that a small number of functional institutions founded by exceptional individuals form the core of society, what an archeological site in Turkey tells us about the history of complex human social behavior, and what his predictions are for the evolution of the American state and its institutions. Learn what role software engineers play in accelerating cultural and perhaps even political change, what the chances are of the entire world becoming ‘weird', and the effects that mass supersonic travel will have on cities, plus a whole lot more! Tune in today! Key Points From This Episode: • Samo describes his Great Founder Theory and how it is distinct from “great man history.” • He weighs in on the natural endowments or geographical determinism arguments. • How incremental cultural developments and traditions fit into Great Founder Theory. • How Great Founder Theory differs from theories like Marxism. • Hear why Samo believes that social and material technology build on one another. • Some of the most underrated great founders in history; Confucius and King Ptolemy of Egypt. • What characteristics the great founder of a city needs, including dogged determination. • The importance of having an awareness of different cultures and how they co-exist. • What Gobekli Tepe tells us about the correlation between agriculture and early civilization. • Learn how Gobekli Tepe changes our view on the history of complex human societies. • Why Samo believes we will continue to find sites that force us to revise our preconceptions. • The reason for the inward-looking nature of many professions in the Western world. • How this myopia became particularly apparent in the public health sector during COVID. • How bureaucracies could benefit from working with talented and widely followed bloggers. • Samo shares his predictions for the evolution of the American state and its institutions; how decayed institutions are a barrier to technology. • Some of the reasons Samo has to be cautiously optimistic about the future of the US. • The cultural innovation that follows forging a new middle-class, as Samo is seeing happening with software engineers in Silicon Valley. • The bravery required to accelerate this change and engage political processes. • Samo's response to the entire world becoming ‘weird' (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic) in two generations. • His reflection on recent alien observations discourse and the possibility of interstellar travel. • Where to build new cities Support this podcast
Samo Burja is a sociologist and founder of Bismarck Analysis that attempts to answer the question: why do some societies live on, while others crumble away? During Samo Burja's conversation with Vance Crowe they discuss technologies that were lost for hundreds of years, the value of mentorship to pass along complex skills, how the Catholic church endured for thousands of years without being able to have children and Burja's controversial hypothesis that agriculture is much older than originally thought (10,000 years).https://www.bismarckanalysis.comhttps://twitter.com/SamoBurjaPodcast Website: https://www.vancecrowe.com/podcastApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-vance-crowe-podcast/id1463771076Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/08nGGRJCjVw2frkbtNrfLw?si=WUCu-FoyRRu9U_i-1gJZfgRSS: https://feeds.transistor.fm/the-vance-crowe-podcastYouTube Full Episodes: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCigB7W5bX_gCinJxev9WB8w/YouTube Clips: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJKKb66A5_4ZcsE-rKI24ygBuy a sweatshirt, T-shirt or mugs from the podcast! Check out the Articulate Ventures Merch Store: https://teespring.com/stores/thevancecrowepodcastSubscribe to the podcast for email notifications on new episodes, invites to events and other exclusive content — http://eepurl.com/gSTfk5ABOUT THE VANCE CROWE PODCAST — Vance Crowe interviews people with an expertise that you would want to know about, but might not think to ask. He prompts his guests to think about their work in novel ways, discusses how it applies to regular people and has fun sharing stories and experiences.SUPPORT THE PODCAST —Rate the Podcast | https://ratethispodcast.com/vcpJoin the Articulate Ventures Network | https://network.articulate.ventures/ —We are a patchwork of thinkers that want to articulate ideas in a forum where they can be respectfully challenged, improved and celebrated so that we can explore complex subjects, learn from those we disagree with and achieve our personal & professional goals.Contact Vance for a Talk | https://www.vancecrowe.com/ —Vance delivers speeches that reveal important aspects of human communication. Audiences are entertained, engaged, and leave feeling empowered to change something about the way they are communicating. Vance tells stories about his own experiences, discusses theories in ways that make them relatable and highlights interesting people, books, and media that the audience can learn even more from. Join the #ATCF Book Club | https://articulate.ventures/category/atcf-book-club
Ben Landua-Taylor is an observer of society that works for Bismarck Analysis, a consulting firm that investigates the political and institutional landscape of society. During their conversation Ben Landua-Taylor and Vance Crowe discuss what is likely to happen to various cultures over time. Chapters:2:24 Start8:53 Reimagining the Past11:59 Ben's Theory of How People Engage20:40 Is there an opening for a new dominant power?23:52 The state of US Institutional health31:16 Is wokeism a regression to the mean?36:04 How can we revive institutions?43:33 Incrimental Vs Breakthrough Technology47:50 Unions aren't what they used to be59:20 Where is culture headed in the US?1:02:16 How will history view the Epstein incident?1:03:58 How can you improve at knowing how the world works?PODCAST LINKS —Podcast Website: https://www.vancecrowe.com/podcastApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-vance-crowe-podcast/id1463771076Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/08nGGRJCjVw2frkbtNrfLw?si=WUCu-FoyRRu9U_i-1gJZfgRSS: https://feeds.transistor.fm/the-vance-crowe-podcastYouTube Full Episodes: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCigB7W5bX_gCinJxev9WB8w/YouTube Clips: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJKKb66A5_4ZcsE-rKI24ygBuy a sweatshirt, T-shirt or mugs from the podcast! Check out the Articulate Ventures Merch Store: https://teespring.com/stores/thevancecrowepodcastSubscribe to the podcast for email notifications on new episodes, invites to events and other exclusive content — http://eepurl.com/gSTfk5ABOUT THE VANCE CROWE PODCAST — Vance Crowe interviews people with an expertise that you would want to know about, but might not think to ask. He prompts his guests to think about their work in novel ways, discusses how it applies to regular people and has fun sharing stories and experiences.SUPPORT THE PODCAST —Rate the Podcast | https://ratethispodcast.com/vcpJoin the Articulate Ventures Network | https://network.articulate.ventures/ —We are a patchwork of thinkers that want to articulate ideas in a forum where they can be respectfully challenged, improved and celebrated so that we can explore complex subjects, learn from those we disagree with and achieve our personal & professional goals.Contact Vance for a Talk | https://www.vancecrowe.com/ —Vance delivers speeches that reveal important aspects of human communication. Audiences are entertained, engaged, and leave feeling empowered to change something about the way they are communicating. Vance tells stories about his own experiences, discusses theories in ways that make them relatable and highlights interesting people, books, and media that the audience can learn even more from. Join the #ATCF Book Club | https://articulate.ventures/category/atcf-book-club
What is a Live Player? How does this concept help us make sense of the cultural landscape? Is becoming one important, maybe essential? Samo Burja is a deep thinker with a talent for creating concepts that help make sense of the cultural landscape, such as 'Live Player', meaning a person or organisation capable of novelty, versus one only able to run existing scripts. The pandemic, and the inept response to it has shown up how many institutions and organisations are now effectively 'dead players', and how hollow and dysfunctional many of our systems have become. In this wide-ranging and inspiring conversation, Samo explains what turns live players into dead ones, the underlying psychology and dynamics at play, and how we might go about changing that process. Rebel Wisdom is shortly to begin a new online journey, called Becoming a Live Player, led by David Fuller and Peter Limberg of The Stoa. We will explore the landscape together, and learn some of the most effective skills, practices and psychotechnologies from as many different sources (memetic tribes) as possible: https://rebelwisdom.co.uk/courses/liv... This conversation was recorded in the Rebel Wisdom Digital Campfire. To see what sessions and discussions are coming up, check here: https://rebelwisdom.co.uk/campfire-ev... Samo Burja, 'About Me': "There has never been an immortal society. No matter how technologically advanced our own society is, it is unlikely to be an exception. To achieve a positive future that defies these odds, we must understand the hidden forces that shape society. In 2017, I founded Bismarck Analysis, a consulting firm that investigates the political and institutional landscape of society. I’m a Research Fellow at the Long Now Foundation where I study how institutions can endure for centuries and millennia. I’m also Senior Research Fellow in Political Science at the Foresight Institute where I advise how institutions can shape the future of technology."
Samo Burja comes on the podcast to talk about when it's appropriate to regulate online speech and the proper relationship between state and media.Samo Burja is the founder of Bismarck Analysis, a political risk consulting firm. He is also a research fellow at the Long Now Foundation. You can follow him on Twitter @SamoBurja.
Samo Burja joins Wolf Tivy and Ash Milton to discuss how great founders make history through the institutions they create, how political transitions actually work, and what intellectual dark matter exists in our society today. Samo Burja is the founder and president of Bismarck Analysis, which applies the foundational sociological research that Samo and his team have produced over the past decade to deliver unique insights to clients about institutional design and strategy. Samo’s studies focus on the social and material technologies that foster healthy human societies with an eye toward understanding and restoring the structures that produce functional institutions. Samo has authored numerous articles and papers on his findings, including his manuscript, Great Founder Theory, available here. Samo is a Senior Research Fellow in Political Science at the Foresight Institute and a Research Fellow at the Long Now Foundation. He speaks about his work to audiences around the world, including at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Y Combinator’s YC 120 conference, the Reboot American Innovation conference in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere. Samo spends most of his time in California and his native Slovenia. He can be followed on Twitter at @SamoBurja.
I had an excellent conversation with Samo Burja of Bismark Analysis. Samo is one of the most original thinkers I have encountered in the last two years, and it was great to have him share some of his ideas here. You can follow him on Twitter, read his writing, or watch his videos on Youtube. Here is Samo on Botswana and political stability - and how Rome handled the "succession problem". The manuscript of Samo's book is here. You can find us on most podcast platforms as "Ideas Untrapped".TRANSCRIPTTobi: Welcome to Ideas Untrapped and today I am with Samo Burja. Samo is a sociologist and he is the founder and president of Bismarck Analysis, a consulting firm. Samo is also an original thinker who has come up with his own theory of history that he called the Great Founder Theory. Welcome, Samo.Samo: Thank you, Tobi. It's a pleasure to be on the show.Tobi: Briefly please, explain the Great Founder Theory. You call it the Theory of History, can you explain it, in the most simplest form, for us.Samo: Well, everyone has a theory of history. There are some people who believe that history is driven by technology, that technology is the most important thing that changes the world. There are others who think that it is the great people - the generals and individuals and scientists and artists. And still, others think it's driven by economic forces like capitalism and so on. So, everyone has opinions on it. Many historians have arguments on it. Many economists have arguments on it, and political scientists. Great Founders Theory which is my theory proposes that history is driven by the exceptional individuals who make the institutions that we all rely on - the founders of states, the founders of exceptional companies, the founders of religions, the prophets or the statesman or the industrialists of history - and that were you to remove someone from history where there to not be that particular individual, that exceptional and unusual individual, history could have gone very very differently. And also it's not just a way to interpret history it's a way to predict the future because it means that instead of necessarily looking at just the economic fundamentals or just the technological fundamentals of a country, you might actually want to look at: well, is there anyone in the country that might be a founder of new institutions? Because I think that be it a state, a company, or an organised religion, over time as you move away from their founding, these institutions can become corrupt or dysfunctional. So even if a country seems to be doing extremely well, if it doesn't have this type of person around who might rebuild the institutions or build them anew, 50 years from now, 100 years from now, 200 years from now, it will do worse. And a country that at first might not seem promising, might suddenly, like, shift to become the centre of the world if it had enough of such people.Tobi: I found your theory on Great Founders interesting. One is that the conventional wisdom, if I can call it that, on thinking about institutions is not vested in people. There is a common saying that "oh, it's about the institutions and not the people", that's how you build enduring systems that can be fair, that can be just, that can order society. So, now, I think the fear...or in places like Africa where there is a long history of coups and bad leaders, how does [the] Great Founder Theory differ from the Great Man Theory of history?Samo: Yeah, it's an important distinction to make, because not every powerful person is a great founder in this sense. They are often people who appropriate or merely direct institutions and organisations that others created. And then at times, if they tried to create an institution, they might not be very good at it. So the big distinction that I would make is that the individuals who can be exceptional - this kind of, like, far-sighted social engineers, I think they are extremely rare. I think they are not just rare in African history, they were in European history and in Asian history but, over time the fruits of their labour accumulate. An example in SouthEast Asia I think would be Lee Kuan Yew. I think that he was an excellent founder of the city-state of Singapore, which was previously a British colony and developed it extremely well. I think in Africa there are some leaders who are definitely worthy of administration, I think that I wrote an article on Botswana for Palladium Magazine where I examined the origin of Botswanan stability and how the royal family of the country actually made extremely good decisions as to how to approach decolonialisation (sic) and so on. And then Paul... I think Paul Kagame deserves, despite his critics and his critics do have a point that he is very much authoritarian in a way, I think he's done a remarkably good job of both developing Rwanda and healing the deep social wounds that the Rwandan genocide caused in the 1990s. And I can certainly relate to that because the 1990s was also the period where - you know, I'm originally from Slovenia, it's a country in the former Yugoslavia - that country was also torn apart, right? So this kind of, like, tearing apart of societies, I think that can be done by almost anyone. The building together of societies, the re-creation of them, the healing of them, the transformation of them, that is very very rare. So I think that that would be the big distinction.Tobi: Yeah. One issue that you've written extensively about is succession, and...Samo: Uh-hmm.Tobi: This is a very important problem with institutions and leaders and founders as well. Two examples: you talked about Kagame...Samo: Hmm hmm.Tobi: I've always found Kagame interesting because Rwanda seems to be in an equilibrium where Kagame does not really trust anybody as a successor, so that's why he's been in power for so long. Some of his speeches, some of the analysis that comes from...[trails off]. It seems like he sees himself as probably the only credible custodian of that healing process, from that horrible experience; and also in Nigeria here we had a very good example when we transitioned to democracy in 1999 and we had a president who had a particularly good second term in office. There were economic reforms, and there was growth. There was some form of shared prosperity in the society and he wanted a third term because he could not trust anybody, even within a system that he built or that was built around him. So explain to us - how important is the succession problem and how do civilizations and societies that have managed that problem really well, how did they do it?Samo: It's an extremely difficult problem, and I think solving the succession problem probably distinguishes the most successful societies or the most long-lived ones from, like, the ones that struggle. In particular, I think that it has two parts: there is skill succession and there is power succession. Where skills succession means that the next person in a position has comparable skills and knowledge and ability to carry out an office. If say, hypothetically, in ancient times, a wise king is succeeded by a foolish son, right? The song can easily undo what the father had done, they can easily endanger the society. On the other hand, you might have a situation where there is a failure of power succession where, for example, there is a wise ruler but there is another wise individual who could come into power but doesn't really have the resources to reach for that position, even if the formal position still exists, it might be encumbered or disabled. There is such a thing as a powerless president. For example, today in Afghanistan, the president of Afghanistan is best understood as the mayor of Kabul. The power of this government does not extend beyond the capital city itself, with the outline regions still - 19 years after the US invasion, they're still basically governed by the Taliban or are directly governed by, like, basically US military forces. So in that case, the power just is not there to govern the space. Now, with regard to the trust between people, the trust has to be justified on a number of grounds. The very interesting thing here is if you consider [that] it's best to have a loyal competent person work with you and work for you and eventually when you have to go, as all people do, either because of old age or because of term limits or because you want to do something else with the remainder of your life, that person is the best person to hand it off to. It is, ironically, sometimes better to have someone who is loyal but incompetent than to have someone who is disloyal and incompetent, at least when it comes to politics. So, in an interesting way, as you point out, Kagame has difficulty finding someone or trusting someone. He has this fear of political opponents and I think this fear is locally rational but ideally, it would be best for society as a whole to have a higher level of trust. There are societies that have transitioned in history from lower to higher trust setups. One example I like to bring up is in the ancient Roman empire, there was a period of the so-called Five Good Emperors. One of these is Marcus Aurelius who is very famous for his stoic philosophy.Tobi: Yeah.Samo: The Roman empire was in a period of crisis then, so this is not when it was most powerful. This was when it was engaged in civil wars where generals would fight each other and direct their armies against each other to try to win in these wars and become emperor. And the solution was very interesting, perhaps a little bit a matter of happenstance, perhaps a little bit a matter of design. The Romans had this institution of adoption where you can declare someone your son and you adopt them as your son even if the person was already an adult. So there was this interesting political trick that was only possible because everyone so firmly respected [not only] family but simultaneously also this kind of strange idiosyncratic practice of adoption where you spiritually make someone your son even if they are not biologically your son. Not all societies have this, only a few societies practice this in human history. So because adoption was [a] widely spread practice, when a Roman emperor who was old would declare a general his son, the idea of killing your son will just make you so unfit to rule that whoever was adopted as the Emperor's son understood that they were most certainly safe.And on the other hand, they also understood that it's no longer in their interest to undermine the works of the previous emperor or raise themselves in rebellion because all they have to do is support the current emperor and then they get to their turn afterwards. I note for example that Botswana has a very good string of presidents where each president was the vice-president of the previous one and the vice-presidents are carefully selected for this kind of skill and partially also their friendship with the Botswana royal family, so this has helped them to avoid a lot of the troubles of other resource-rich countries. So that would be a different example than the Roman example. And a third example of a way this can be done is the Japanese practice of Moko Yoshi which is the practice of - in Japan, again there is a strong emphasis on family and there is a strong emphasis, however, also on honour and on company performance. And they well understand sometimes that your son might not always be...first of, you might not have a son, but secondly, your son might not always be the most talented at business. So the practice of Moko Yoshi is called son-in-law adoption - it means that for a wealthy industrialist or entrepreneur, they will try to find for their daughter a husband who has business sense and then the daughter marries the man with business sense but the daughter doesn't take her husband's name. Rather the husband takes this prestigious name and some of Japan's biggest companies in their past had made use of this. I think Toyota was an example and I think a few other of their household name companies. This allowed it so that the next CEO of the company, the next head of the company had reason to trust this person because this person is their son-in-law and not only their son-in-law, [but] because the Japanese put so much on to the owner of the family name, this person would be interested in supporting it and supporting the original vision of the company. So this is another way you can produce this kind of trust. These are the three interesting examples - one is through marriage, another one was through adoption, and another one was through this long period of cooperation where you have someone that is your right-hand man, that you work with for 5 or 10 years, you are the president, they are the vice-president, and you sometimes would do interesting things where I think the succession went like this ...I mean I have to possibly check my notes on this but they [Botswana] also had some aspects of this familial bond that can overcome this distrust where, you know, basically president Festus Mogae served as Quett Masire's vice-president but then...Tobi: Yeah.Samo: President Ian Khama who was the son of Seretse Khama who was the first president to try to lead this effort to leave the British empire and achieve independence. So he didn't put Ian Khama directly in charge, no, he rather put Quett Masire and this gave this opportunity that, you know... if Ian was not the best selection, you could have just gone with his vice-president but instead there was still this opportunity to rely on the family connection at the end of the day because someone who was like a close family friend, it would feel difficult for them to move against the son of someone else who was once their close friend and someone who had raised them up to the position of president. So, again, the relationship had to be developed before the country became independent in an interesting way, right? This initial friendship, because then the stakes are lower. So I would say that testing and building close ties before you are in the position of power might actually be the best way to get relationships you can rely on even after you are in power. This was a long answer and relatively involved, but I hope it laid out some of these mechanisms well enough.Tobi: Listening to that bit, I'm wondering does not democratic ideals or what we have come to define as democratic ideal not conflict with these succession strategies that you laid out. I mean I'll give you an example.Samo: Uh-hmm.Tobi: In party politics, for example, in Nigeria, politicians practice some kind of what you would call the "adoption system" but in social discourse, in political discourse, we have labelled it as "God Fatherism" and it is fundamentally perceived as unfair - that whatever comes out of that process does not represent the consensus of the people and so there's an instinctive reaction negatively...Samo: Yes.Tobi: To that. So does democracy conflict with succession in a way, the way you look at history?Samo: I think that democracy is very interesting. I will describe democracy as something that can deeply undermine trust or can deepen trust immensely. And it kind of depends [on] how well-functioning the society is in the first place. So I would say that in a well-functioning democracy, you might have people who compete and in public criticize constructively their opponents and proposed better plans for the good of the country. Yet then, when the president is elected or when the party is elected, the two parties or the two candidates who are rivals still trust the other side to adhere to [the] rule of law and believe that at this point, now that the election is over, the best course for everyone is to work together towards a better country and then you repeat this process every 4 years or 8 years or 10 years...so this is, I think, democracy at its best - where it allows you to express constructive criticism, advancement, the public good on the basis of the social fabric of already well-developed political relations, where there is a sense of shared interest among all the citizens of the country. Now, where it works the worst...I'm going to now reference back the example of the introduction of democracy in my own country Yugoslavia (I was born in Yugoslavia, I was a kid when it broke apart in the 1990s). The best way for Slobodan Milosevic who was a Serbian to win elections was to stoke the sort of resentment and anger of the Serbians that, to be honest... some real problems...there was a real conflict between Albanians and Serbians in the province, of course. But this immediately made it so that Slovenians, Croatians, Albanians, and others felt increasingly uncomfortable, they didn't want to live in a country that was completely dominated by Serbian elites in Belgrade. Before 1980, there was essentially, like, a dictatorial system where Tito was in charge. From 1980 to 1990, there was this tentative federal balance that was non-democratic, so there was this balance of power between the various wings of the Communist party, and then this balance of power was shattered by the introduction of democracy. So what I'll say here is - democracy is extremely powerful...it's a very powerful way to transform the balance of power of a society and put to the test the trust that already exist in a society or does not. So I would say that what is popularly understood as a democratic ideal which is that democracy itself will bring about higher trust, I think this is false. It is however true that high trust, high maturity, and high sense of, like, shared destiny and responsibility among a people, and among the elites of a people of a country, that this can allow democracy to express very very good government. And in fact, if you think about it, in a well-functioning democracy, the selection process should work better than, say, in a monarchy. Again, the hypothetical example of a monarchy that's hereditary, you know... the first son inherits or the kingdom is split between all the sons of the king. These were the two methods of inheritance in the ancient Middle East or Europe in medieval times.Either one of those systems is kind of a throw of the dice. It's sure that the successor will be loyal, at best, if they're good son but they might not be competent, and in a well-functioning democracy and a high trust system, you should, in theory, have this. But I think it's a very delicate machine, I think it relies on [the] rule of law, and it relies on elites that feel that there is [a] common ground. So even though it's a democracy and there is a will of the people, even in democracies some people are more powerful than others. I think this is a fact. If you look at modern... any western country you want to look at, some people are wealthier, some people are more powerful, some people are more influential, some people have more sway over the public's opinions, some people are charismatic - whether it's America or Canada or Germany or any of the Asian democracies such as South Korea or Japan, it works this way. The elites still matter. I think that in this sense, the best way to implement a democratic system is to first create this sense of shared purpose and shared destiny in a people, and to balance the interests of all the groups that live in the country. And I think here I would reference the work of Machiavelli who wrote in one of his books, I think it was on the Discourses on Livy - he said that the constitution of a country, be it a monarchy, a republic or a democracy is always the work of a single man, the single individual. I don't think that's quite true. I think it's usually a small group of people, organised around an individual, like say, America's founding fathers were... but I think it says something very real. I think democracy has difficulty producing the preconditions for its own success.The question is, do you want to be friends and do you support the entrepreneurial young man that doesn't have much money to his name? - SBTobi: That's interesting. That sort of leads me to my next question.Samo: Uh-hmm.Tobi: Are there deep roots element to having a great founder? And here is what I mean: from research in cultural evolution, I think from the works of Joe Henrich and co., societies are classified as either low trust or high trust...Samo: Hmm.Tobi: And we know that high trust societies (they) tend to handle some of these problems like (we've talked about) succession really well. So are there cultural or biologically intrinsic elements to societies that managed to invent credible institutions or produce great founders, at least, more than other rival civilizations?Samo: Well, there is an interesting question of what exactly is producing great founders, right? I don't think I really know the answer to that, I believe that an openness to exceptional skill is very worthwhile. So a society that values the great scientist or the great artist or perhaps be kinder to the great religious and spiritual leader or the wise and thoughtful political leader or the very productive and industrious economic leader, and importantly it will be open to what these people look like before they are successful. Like, everyone wants to be friends with Rockefeller when Rockefeller is already rich. The question is, do you want to be friends and do you support the entrepreneurial young man that doesn't have much money to his name?Tobi: Uh uh.Samo: I think this kindness to what the beginner's stage looks like because if you imagine someone that can go on this trajectory to shape a society - to, like, notably improve it - this person is going to be saying some very strange things when they're young. They are not going to be doing whatever everyone else is doing. His parents might be like "well, you should become a lawyer or a doctor" and instead this person has this seemingly crazy dream that just later on in life turns out not to be crazy. They might still, as part of this dream, receive a lawyer's education. But instead of, say, going to a law firm, they might create either a political party or they might start lobbying for the change of a particular law that enables a particular kind of business or city government or they might run for an office or they might spend 10 years reading books and being a scholar for some reason that's very difficult to explain to others. So there has to be in a society, I think, a desire for excellence, some tolerance for eccentricity or at least the harmless kinds of eccentricity and an encouragement or at least... it cannot be too focused on trying to stamp out creative. Now, ironically, I think some very high trust societies will actually suffer some long-term problems because they have this philosophy where, you know... you hammer the nail that stands out. I think in say modern Denmark or Scandinavia and perhaps also in modern Japan. It's actually extremely difficult to be someone that does something different. Partially because things seem to be working pretty well - there is a healthcare system, the streets are clean, the economy has been stable, everyone's been rich for as long as they can remember - so why are you being a troublemaker and saying you do everything different from everyone else? Who are you to think that you are special or that you know better?So this actually, I think, in the long run, might make Japan, again, and Denmark fragile. And I think this is an advantage to say, some other rich countries such as the US and over time more and more China [which] actually still retain this possibility of being contrarian, not in your words necessarily. It's not respect for necessarily people who are disrespectful to society at large or loud (though certainly such people that can succeed in the United States), it is more [of] a tolerance for a very different way to approach your career and intellectual and economical life. And then I'll add some more components to this - so I had this drive for excellence, this tolerance for eccentricity, the tolerance for the beginner to choose a different life path than other talented young men and women might choose. I think the availability of local traditions of knowledge is immensely important. Where, by traditions of knowledge, I mean the possibility of finding mentors who themselves are exceptionally skilled or exceptionally successful or exceptionally insightful.Historically, there were some universities that played this role and they didn't necessarily play this role through "well, you know, the students and the students are taught by the teachers", it's more as... if you went in medieval, times in England to Oxford, it was just a place where all the smartest scholars of Europe had gathered or say the Cervon in France. And whether or not you were a student of the university, if you could travel there, you could talk to them and you could write with them and you could listen to them. The availability of this knowledge immensely sped up progress and similar things can be said of Florence in the Renaissance. Florence is a city in Italy renowned for its great art. If you were a sculpture or a painter, your craft - your art - will progress much much faster if you could go to Florence and ideally apprentice yourself to someone. But even if you couldn't apprentice yourself, merely walking through the streets of Florence - they had the practice of having these workshops that were open to the street, you could actually just literally see what people are up to and what kind of stuff is produced. And it had this, again, this culture of critique where they would have high standards, so they would examine critically what artists are making and compare it to each other and they were quite direct and open about it much as Italians sometimes are even till today - they are quite disagreeable. So I think this availability of other experts, people who perhaps themselves are not great founders but have quite great mastery in things like rhetoric or law or human organisation or technology or understanding of the country and its issues. The availability of such people can greatly aid great founders. So this perhaps is just kind of the preconditions for this and I'm happy to comment on any specific countries or regions but each of those is like quite involved things... so...Tobi: Let's talk about China. Samo: Perfect. Perfect.Tobi: Interesting article, by the way, yesterday. I read it. Packed with so much insight. And of course, China, in the last decade, has been the most important economic partner to most African economies, so whatever happens in China, the extension of its global power reaches every corner of the African economy.Samo: Uh-hmm.Tobi: You talked about Deng Xiaoping and how he managed to handle the succession problem and Xi who is currently torn between keeping the fire of Marxism burning or watch it die out with modernism and all. How big a threat is the internal political contradictions that China face right now? How big a threat is it globally?Samo: Well, I think that China is facing an immense challenge, I'm very glad that you enjoyed the article. The article in Asia Times outlines my position which is that they did an immensely good job of resolving the contradiction of how to have economic growth with a Marxist ideology. But the problem is they do need the Marxist ideology to keep their political system together. So the succession problem there is driven not just by this difficulty with Marxism where it can always be interpreted in this way that actually shuts down capitalism and economic production - where if the successors of Xi don't take it seriously enough, they have no political principle with which to maintain power and perhaps this could be replaced by something like a democracy but I think that's not trivial at all. It might very easily shatter the country apart as it had numerous times in its long history. China has this long history of dividing into smaller fighting countries and then reuniting. These dynastic cycles have happened several times in the twentieth century. They had terrible civil wars at the start of the 20th century. So it's very risky to undermine the political structure of the country, it's very risky. And then on the other hand, if you take the Marxism too seriously, especially if you take the Maoism too seriously, you might end up destroying this engine of economic growth because then how can you have in a communist society billionaire's, which China obviously does, right, Jack Ma and so on. I think that civil society enables a civilization robustness. Hyper centralised systems can seem very efficient but they can be very fragile. As soon as the centre fails, everything fails. - SBThe succession problem has an even more fundamental issue where while Chinese industry allows for exceptional and strange individuals, like a lot of the billionaires are somewhat eccentric, their academic system does not. Their scientific progress is much slower and the students are very very good students but they don't pursue bold research and a lot of the members of the Chinese Communist Party go through the somewhat academic selection process. And then there is another selection process of "well, which party member advances within the Communist Party of China?" Well, it's the one that doesn't rock the boat. It's the one that's, you know, quiet and agrees with the policy and supports the policy. And in an important way, of course, you can have someone like Xi who he is very reserved in speech, very obedient, plays by the rules and when they come into power they pursue their bold plans they had all along or they acquire and grow into [the] office and become bolder. But for the most part, this is just going to be "yes men" and Xi is the last member of the generation that saw the possible failure of the Communist system. He saw the failure of it in his youth when his family and he himself were targeted by the Chinese red guards during the so-called Cultural Revolution. For a few years, he spent his childhood exiled in the countryside feeding pigs, and that probably stuck in his memory. He understands how despite, I'm sure Xi is... I’m sure he believes in Marxism but he understands this failure part of it and then later in his life he saw the collapse of the Soviet Union. We have to understand that for the Chinese, the Soviet Union in the 1980s was kind of the elder brother, just as in the 1990s Eastern Europeans might admire the wealth and development of Western Europeans. So in the 1960s and 70s, Chinese communists both admired and envied the global power and the technological development of the Soviet Union. So seeing the Soviet Union collapse was this big shock for the communist part of the world, only a few communist countries stayed communist after the fall of the Soviet Union - North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, and China and that's basically about it. All of the African and European countries that had experimented with socialism basically abandoned it, it was no longer a viable system. Xi saw this again as a young man, and already on his career...so in a way, he saw both of the failures in [indistinct word].Tobi: Hmm.Samo: He is going to be in power for a while more and I don't think anyone who is of a younger generation has that sort of experiences. All they have is the experience of maneuvering in a Communist Party, ruling an already fairly developed China. So their intuitions and knowledge of what does failure look like for political system or how do unwise decisions come about? it's going to be in a way much impoverished. So I think there is a knowledge transmission problem here. I think power succession works fine because the Communist Party has such control over the country but knowledge succession is a big problem for them and they have a lot of difficulty solving it.Tobi: Somehow I wonder whether these are not (maybe they are, maybe they are not) symptoms of increasing prosperity. One very important point you made in that essay was how much order is necessary to create and maintain a market system. I think a lot of people underestimate that. We all like to believe in this Hayekian vision of an emergent market. So...Samo: Like an idealized market set of rules where people exchange goods and they, sort of, discover what's...together they discover what's the best economic outcomes through the price system and so on.Tobi: Yeah, yeah...I mean, we've been taught to believe that. So when I look at China, people like Ang Yuen Yuen have said that Deng Xiaoping reforms were based on having a decentralized approach to policy and here you have Xi, again, who is so centralised in his approach to economic management. But if you look at cosmopolitan cities like Shenzhen and every other metropolis in China that have seen incredible prosperity in the last 40 to 50 years, isn't the current tension a necessity? That is, when people make more money, when they become more successful, they demand more rights. They become less obedient, they become less conformist, what do you think of that?Samo: I think that there is a strong set of prerequisites in terms of enforcing these relatively strong rules that enable personal liberty in the first place. That you don't have to fear whether or not your store will be expropriated and that you can rely on [the] courts if someone else, say, double-crosses you in a business deal, those are absolute absolutely massive. It just means that people, once those two things become true, then the most rational course of action is to participate in the market and benefit from the market. Until those things are true it's very difficult. And again what is supporting those courts? What's supporting that political order? Well, that's not trivial at all. That took a lot of work in the first place. And I think that this development that we saw in China was that... the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution was a quiet realisation among the remaining members of the Communist Party because they had been purging each other (those internal fight), was that "you know, this got out of hand, I would like more security in my political career. I don't want to be killed on charges, I don't want to be imprisoned, I don't want to be exiled, I'm going to work together with the other people to make sure nothing like this can happen again. And as a side effect of this almost kind of self-interested political aspect, this enables a reformer like Deng Xiaoping to produce something that has not just given political safety to this party officials, but gives economic and political safety to everyone in the society, at least to a much higher degree than was previously available. I'm not ignoring at all the fact of how heavy-handed the Chinese government can be, I'm just pointing out that the mechanic of the change that enabled this broader liberty was partially driven by the people who are already powerful. You can't obviously have this be driven by everyone in [the] existing elite, but I think every reform of society has had one sub-section of the elite interested in change and bringing in new people as allies, who previously were not part of the old elite to become part of the new one. So, there is a change in the ruling coalition... that can happen. And I think often those can be very positive if designed well and can result in what's essentially this higher degree of safety. And I think once the safety is guaranteed, then there's more room for personal expression and this bottom-up order.Tobi: Interesting. Interesting, Samo. So I'm just going to toss out a few theories and framework and I want to hear your reaction to that and weather GFT affirms or refutes that. Acemoglu and Robinson talked about inclusive and extractive institutions, what do you think about that framework?Samo: I think that inclusive or extractive institutions is a good path... it's an interesting frame, right? I think that in the real world, an institution can be both inclusive and extractive. So I think there is some insight there, but I think my perspective on institutions is that they can easily combine many things that seem mutually contradictory. So I'll say it sometimes gives the correct answer but it's basically not as total as it's presented.Tobi: Hmm. In their framework, at least they've extended their theory with their new book, they talked about this narrow corridor where... I don't want to call it perfect, but this balance between the power of the state and the freedom of the civil society as this zone where prosperity sort of exists. Is that...I find that hard to believe somewhat despite all the evidence they marshalled in their book and other research papers...Samo: Uh-hmm, Uh-hmm, Uh-hmm...Tobi: So what role does civil society play in GFT?Samo: In GFT, civil society is the space where new institutions can be designed without the approval of the centre, without the approval of central power because GFT has this self component of high-medium-low...where I think civil society is the space where the middle powers can be built. In other words, to build a great successful company you ideally don't need to have that many government friends. To successfully pursue a new political ideology or new social or ethical ideology, you shouldn't necessarily have to fully wrestle with everyone in society immediately... so, again, another additional aspects of this is I think that the civil society represents this very important redundancy. Redundancy in the positive sense where if you are on an airplane and the electronics of the airplane fails while you are in the air, you really hope that there is a backup electronic system; or if you are in a hospital and you are recovering and the electricity goes out you very much hope that there is a power generator attached to the hospital allowing whatever equipment that is needed for your health to keep on running. I think that civil society enables a civilization robustness. Hyper centralised systems can seem very efficient but they can be very fragile. As soon as the centre fails, everything fails. A strong civil society on the other hand enables not only [a] healthy competition and experimentation which of course should not endanger the centre or should not endanger the coherence and common destiny and stability of the civilization or society, but it enables a backup. So if the centre fails, there is something that is not too far from being able to become the new centre.Tobi: Interesting. Let's talk about technology for a bit, Samo. One of the things that this notion of catch-up growth is built on in economic development is that if you can facilitate technology transfer between a nation that is advanced to a nation that is behind, then you can engineer some form of economic growth. But you also have this concept of social technologies that in my own interpretation do not transfer so easily. What are your thoughts on that?Samo: I think this is very much true. I think that it's very easy to transfer, say, the adoption of a physical technology. It's like not that hard to have the users...you know, everyone has then a smartphone, right? Tobi: Yeah.Samo: It's a little bit harder to have it be sold that the workers and managers exist to run a phone factory, on the other hand, that's a little bit more difficult. And social technologies play a role in this and I think the transfer of social technology is something very interesting and tricky. I feel it is important to note that naively trying to completely copy social technologies from a completely different society can have disastrous or ineffective consequences. Because, in fact, there are already social technologies in whatever society. There is no society without its own ecosystem of highly specialised social technologies. The beautiful balance happens when one is able to learn from other societies and then customise what is introduced. I'm going to use the example here of 19th century Japan. Nineteenth-century Japan, sort of, forcibly opened to trade by Admiral Perry, basically, they are behind on military technology. They understand very well in the aftermath of the Meiji restoration that it's not just the adoption of Western science nor is it the adoption whole-scale of just Western culture and views, but they are very selective. What they do is they send their most talented students to Germany and the United States with specific missions; some of are tasked by the Japanese government as representatives to learn everything they can about how the officer system work in Germany, for example, in 19th century in Germany, 19th century Prussia? How do the ranks work? What kind of discipline and training do the soldiers go through? And they return changing the Japanese army from this relatively archaic system that's feudal, that has samurai because if you arm the samurai with the machine guns and whatever, they're not actually using the artillery, the equipment well nor are they fighting coherently or employing the correct tactics. So the army would in effect be terrible. But they copied the Western system of ranks and training - everything up from the military academies to the organisation of the provisions. They go and observe it. They participate in those armies and then they return to the country, and with the full political backing produced this transformation. And then for the ones that go to the United States, they observed the organisation of railway companies and how American companies operated internally. And note this, of course, was a very different America. This was an America that was still at the frontier - the transcontinental railroad was barely built, so there were definitely people there that knew how to build a completely new railroad system, how to finance it, how to even deal with security issues - and then that transfer goes back to Japan. And then there are people who are in London just working for several years as basically shipwrights that return and then oversee the construction of the first ship. So these are not just technical skills, all them are learning some technical skills but they are also learning things like what does a relationship look like between a soldier and a commanding officer? What does the internal organisation of a shipyard look like? How do shipyards connect with funding and with resources? And how do they select skilled labour vs unskilled labour? How do they enforce workplace discipline? What do you do if the shipwrights come drunk to the shipyard, how do you respond to that? These all seem very trivial everyday problems, but for the most part, we rely on our social understanding, our cultural, our social technology to see what is acceptable and what are the expectations that should be set and should be respected and how to resolve various kinds of conflict and how to reach various kinds of decisions - these are all things that have to be patented. Yet, despite all these expeditions to do this learning, they intentionally combined this and pursue this strategy where they picked and choose which of these practices were compatible with Japanese society. So Japan stayed Japan and successfully industrialized… and it was unsuccessful during World War II obviously, but even after WWII, Japanese society remains distinct and actually in some ways functions better than Western societies. Like, if you go to their high-speed transit, it's maintained at a higher level than you see any western country. So they combine this with some of these strengths that they have... this very broad attention to aesthetics [and] this high level of politeness that they had inherited from that particular kind of feudal society. So yeah, you have to live in a new society, I think. You have to observe it happening, and then not only do you have to live there, you have to return; and not only do you have to return, you mustn't change everything. You must change just something very narrow that works on the strengths of the other social technologies available rather than trying to wholesale imitate something that ultimately has its own flaws.Tobi: Economist Gareth Jones has this concept of hive minds where he says national IQ matters more than the IQ of an individual person and these are correlated with how successful and prosperous a society is. I'm not even going to ask how true or false that is but are higher IQ societies more likely to have great founders than not?Samo: It's a very interesting question. I mean IQ is one of those things that it might not be a good measurement, it might be a good measurement in some circumstance. I think that... yeah, I think there is whatever (I won't measure it with IQ)...Tobi: Okay.Samo: But I do think societies with intelligent people or with greater respect for intelligence or with greater ability to produce intelligent people, I think they do have an advantage here, yeah. You require also other things because as I noted, you might have extremely intelligent people that are however doing exactly the same thing that everyone else is doing. If you imagine a classroom of very very diligent student that mostly to just do the same thing that all the other diligent students...like, that might result in like, say, some well-run things. It might like result in trains that go on time or on factories that can rely on a high level of skill of their workers but the problem is those same students would never have built the train system in the first place or would never have pushed for its creation nor would they have ever pushed for the creation of the factory. So there are additional factors here. I remember reading some articles about Gareth Jones's book, I will say where he's very very right is that if you have a higher culture of intelligence in a society, it becomes easy to not have to worry about things. You don't have to worry whether trivial everyday things are taken care of, you can focus on the truly difficult parts. Again, you can rely on the train that takes you to your class to be there on time, for example. That's like easier, it's not just a matter of organisations, [it's] also a matter of, like, the competence of the rail workers and so on... and these small everyday differences, if you imagine them just through the lifetime of a potential great founder, they make a massive difference.I'm not sure I think that you need to have absolutely all of society be like this, I think it's actually sufficient to have a city that's intelligent in this way. Like I give the example of medieval Europe and the city of Oxford. I think it was quite sufficient to just have Oxford where there were a bunch of smart people around. I think it didn't much matter whether the rest of England at the time was very intelligent or not.Tobi: Hmm. That's interesting. You also talked about Life Players in your book which I greatly enjoy and for the audience, I'm going to put up a link to the publicly available manuscript for the Great Founder Theory book. How can one recognise Life Players in society or in an institution?Samo: I think Life Players are going to the people that have succeeded at very very different tasks. So they are going to be these individuals that have, perhaps, either changed careers (two or three completely different careers) and have been successful at all of them; or completely changed their interpersonal style and were as successful when they were strict as when they were jovial, when they were easy-going or people who have done intellectually completely different things. So what you're looking for is not only a very high skill in an area - again, it's very possible to be extremely skilled in an area and ultimately not be that well-adapted - what you're looking for is the combination of both skill and execution, intentionally observing their environment and success at transitioning. So (a) success at transitioning to completely new strategies and this might look like an entrepreneur that has built a successful company in one industry that [they] then specialise in a different industry and very quickly build a successful company there too. Elon Musk might be a good example where he both has created this business that's a car factory that makes electric cars - Tesla - and has also succeeded in aerospace with his company SpaceX which recently brought American astronauts to space again for the first time ever on a privately built rocket rather than a rocket built by NASA.Tobi: Uh uh.Samo: A different example of a Life Player and I have to emphasise here when I say Life Player, I don't mean I agree with everything the person does. I'm just observing that they have the skill and adaptability. I think Vladimir Putin has showed over the last twenty years in Russia an extreme adaptability where Russia pursued many different strategies to try to maintain its position in the world, and Russia right now punches above its weight. For example, the annexation of Crimea was completely inspired. Nothing like that had happened in Europe before...Tobi: Uh uhSamo: And it was done with, like, killing almost no people, I think something like three or four people died. It was incredible how they orchestrated the mere surrender of the Ukrainian army because the Ukrainian army was so confused and honestly scared with the appearance of these Russian soldiers that, note, were even not officially Russian soldiers. They were wearing no official flags or patches, so they wouldn't give any answers as to who they were. They could plausibly say that they were Ukrainian because Ukrainians and Russians (they) look similar, they speak very similar language, there's a Russian minority in Ukraine and...you know, Crimea declares independence, and then immediately after declaring independence asks to join Russia and Russia says "yes". It's kind of amazing how that can happen. Not saying it was good for Ukraine, definitely, it was good for Russia, I think. And this results in this very creative process because there is no way in the world that Putin ever planned for there to be a civil war in Ukraine, but having the fact of the civil war happen, he and his team very quickly moved tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people and carried out a military operation that had never been performed before by the Russian army. The Russian army has a long history, many centuries ago but believe me they've never engaged and subtle stuff. They usually had this very overt, very heavy-handed interventions in other countries. If you think about it like this intervention in Hungary in the 1950s, in Czechoslovakia in the '60s, they just roll in the tanks and, like, assert authority. And here? No no no. Much more flexible, very subtle. And because the conditions were so unpredictable, this is how we can know that this was not planned a decade in advance. This was a quick adaptation over the course of, possibly, as little as six months to a completely changed situation. So I think that even if you were within the same industry, if this company, if this government, if this organisation, if this institution adapts quickly to massive changes, that's a strong sign that a Life Player he is at the helms. Because no automated system continues working when the operating conditions changed. It stops working if it's the preconditions are not met.Tobi: Hmm. One of your ideas [that] I've also found very interesting is the concept of Intellectual Dark Matter. How can a society benefit maximally from its intellectual dark matter - the tacit knowledge that's around?Samo: Intellectual Dark Matter refers to this concept that makes the analogy to physical dark matter because currently when the physicists and the astronomers look at our galaxy and they count all the stars and put together all the mass, they realise that there must be much more mass there than only what's visible...Tobi: Yeah.Samo: Because, otherwise, the gravity wouldn't be strong enough to keep this spinning galaxy that we find ourselves in and other galaxies together. So they don't yet know what this missing mass is but they are investigating it. And with Intellectual Dark Matter, I think if we put together all the books, all the stuff that's on the internet, all the stuff that's recorded, I think we still find that there is missing knowledge. There is knowledge and skill that we have not explicitly, formally recorded - written down or put into words that deeply matters. And once you start thinking about that, it's very easy to come up with examples of stuff that is very difficult to put into words or put into writing. The skill of a heart surgeon that saves the patient's life. Like, that's a remarkable set of skills but how do you put into words how to perform a heart surgery? Very very difficult, right? Takes a lot of words. I have an article titled "How YouTube is Revolutionising Knowledge Transfer" and I point out that...Tobi: Yeah, I read that.Samo: I point out that for a good enough camera, recording the hand movements in these very skills, and it doesn't have to be just heart surgery, it can be as trivial as cooking or perhaps the way you treat complex machinery... recording the video and others watching this video might be much much better way to convey such knowledge. I also think that we in society, in general, like seeing the results - we like seeing the finished essay or the finished theory by a Thinker. So if I go back to the world of abstractions to either philosophy or science or whatever, we like seeing the finished theory.What we don't see is all of the crazy or stupid ideas that this very intelligent person came up with before they got the right idea. They usually do that on their own or with a close circle of friends. So, one might be tempted to think and look at an extremely successful thinker and assume that they were always very polished, that they were always very eloquent, often this is not the case. Often they are immensely long learning period. Now, I admit I might be a little biased here because I did spend most of the last decade pursuing this kind of, like, thinking, reading, investigating and for most of this time period, people were not immediately interested in my ideas.Tobi: Hmm.Samo: But about two to three years ago, the material not only clicked together but I found the words to express what I, to myself, felt I had understood for several years before, I just could not really find the way to relate it and show to others in a short period of time how in fact this is useful to them. So I think all of these things form part of Intellectual Dark Matter and there is much more. There is, for example, we might not know what the exact process is that allows you...that allows Elon's team at SpaceX, engineers at SpaceX to make that rocket, and we might not even have that available anywhere because it might be classified. There are probably rules, I actually know that there are laws in the US that prevent SpaceX from simply explaining how they're making this vehicle to a company based in a foreign country. They don't want to teach all the countries how to make rockets for obvious reasons, and more importantly, SpaceX probably doesn't want to share its rocket designs with Boeing - their competitor.Tobi: Uh uh.Samo: So there is also an element of proprietary knowledge and trade secrets for stuff that is understood explicitly, stuff that can be put into words, can be put in a document but the person who has this knowledge wants to keep a competitive advantage; sometimes for very good reasons or the organisation that possesses this knowledge doesn't want to share it. So, that also forms a type of intellectual dark matter - it's knowledge we can't directly examine.Tobi: Interesting you talked about YouTube. The global pandemic has seen an increase in virtualisation, are we going to see a reform in education away from the classroom and a reduction in direct instruction? Samo: I think that we will see an increase in autodidacts - so people who know how to learn on their own. I think, however, that most people will return to the classrooms once the pandemic has died down. I don't think there will be permanent remote instructions and I think the reason for this is that the performance seems to be much worse. It seems to actually be the case that unless you are inherently interested in the material. If you're just a kid who's going to school or taking online classes because you have to take online classes or because you have to go to school, it seems your performance is going to be worse. You're going to learn less than if you physically go there. And I think that for autodidacts, there is going to be an abundance of resources - everything from recorded lectures to tests made. So it's going to improve those chances of those who are seeking knowledge out of curiosity primarily, or out of self-development and professional development; but for the majority of people learning, I think this transition is going to be temporary. I don't think it will be a permanent shift.Tobi: So, Samo, it's kind of a tradition on the show to ask this final question. What's the one big idea that you want to see spread globally? Samo: That's a great question. I think if there is one idea that I would like to put in everyone's minds or everyone's hands, it's this realisation that...I think that the surest sign of good knowledge is the ability to act on this knowledge. So I think that there is some deep confusion as to when knowing things and when doing things - how do these two relate to each other? And I think if only we understood that there are many things that have the appearance of knowledge, such as eloquent speech or perhaps particularly good writing that don't carry the substance of it. We should always observe the practice of the individuals and organisations claiming to have knowledge. For example, the WHO...I'm sure it's made of many excellent experts - they individually know many things about the coronavirus but the organisation as a whole despite claiming to know, in its public communication seems incapable of relaying that knowledge. So I think the result should be "well we should take them less seriously on the coronavirus". And if this map between who is believed to have knowledge and who actually has knowledge, if we improve that map, as a species, I think that our ability as human beings and our societies would really rise. It will be a remarkable thing to see and I think the societies that went through golden ages, I think they basically had these happy periods where the two coincided. You know, times like the Renaissance or whatever.Tobi: That's a great idea. We're sure to help you spread it over here at least.Samo: Thank you so much for having me on the show.Tobi: Yeah. Thank you so much, Samo. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.ideasuntrapped.com/subscribe
My guest today is Samo Burja, the founder of Bismarck Analysis, a firm that analyzes institutions, governments, and companies for high net worth individuals. Samo is known for an idea called Great Founder Theory, and his research focuses on the causes of societal decay and flourishing. This is my second time having Samo on the podcast. In this episode, we spoke about high vs. low trust societies, the difference between writing styles in New York and San Francisco, the economics of building an online audience, and how the Internet is raising the value of being a good photographer. But first, we begin talking about how-to videos on YouTube, and their influence on culture. I hope you enjoy this episode.
Samo Burja (@SamoBurja), founder of Bismarck Analysis, joins Erik for this episode. You can find him on Medium at medium.com/@samo.burja. They talk about:- Whether capitalism and democracy are incompatible and what the future holds for democracy.- Why economists need to look inside companies to learn from their cultures, not just at the relations between companies.- Why the grey hoody is as much a worker’s uniform as the suit of the 1950s was.- The coming merger of east and west coast media companies.- China, the trade war, and the effects of the country expanding its influence in Europe and the Middle East.- Why the big story of the 21st century that everyone is missing is that the Indian Ocean will become the hub of the world economy.- Why he’s skeptical about the extent to which crypto will decentralize society.- What people misunderstand about Henry Kissinger’s approach to geopolitics.Remember to apply for the winter vintage of our Network Catalyst accelerator! It is a personalized program that features masterclasses from some of the best in Silicon Valley and a dedicated network leader focused on making the introductions you need to turbocharge your company. You can participate in-person in San Francisco or virtually from anywhere around the world. Find out more and apply at villageglobal.vc/networkcatalyst.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.
Samo Burja (@SamoBurja), founder of Bismarck Analysis, joins Erik for this episode. You can find him on Medium at medium.com/@samo.burja. They talk about:- Whether capitalism and democracy are incompatible and what the future holds for democracy.- Why economists need to look inside companies to learn from their cultures, not just at the relations between companies.- Why the grey hoody is as much a worker’s uniform as the suit of the 1950s was.- The coming merger of east and west coast media companies.- China, the trade war, and the effects of the country expanding its influence in Europe and the Middle East.- Why the big story of the 21st century that everyone is missing is that the Indian Ocean will become the hub of the world economy.- Why he’s skeptical about the extent to which crypto will decentralize society.- What people misunderstand about Henry Kissinger’s approach to geopolitics.Remember to apply for the winter vintage of our Network Catalyst accelerator! It is a personalized program that features masterclasses from some of the best in Silicon Valley and a dedicated network leader focused on making the introductions you need to turbocharge your company. You can participate in-person in San Francisco or virtually from anywhere around the world. Find out more and apply at villageglobal.vc/networkcatalyst.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.
Samo Burja (@SamoBurja), founder of Bismarck Analysis, joins Erik for this episode. You can find him on Medium at medium.com/@samo.burja. In this episode they discuss:- Why certain societies flourish while others decay- Where Samo stands on the nature versus nurture debate- Why he has “yet to hear a satisfying description of human social life”- The lessons we can learn from places like Singapore- The difference between the view of government as resource for the people versus the view of people as resources for the government- Why he’s skeptical of happiness research as it relates to countries- Why neither Obama nor Trump were inevitable- The future of China, the US, and globalizationThanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.
Samo Burja (@SamoBurja), founder of Bismarck Analysis, joins Erik for this episode. You can find him on Medium at medium.com/@samo.burja. In this episode they discuss:- Why certain societies flourish while others decay- Where Samo stands on the nature versus nurture debate- Why he has “yet to hear a satisfying description of human social life”- The lessons we can learn from places like Singapore- The difference between the view of government as resource for the people versus the view of people as resources for the government- Why he’s skeptical of happiness research as it relates to countries- Why neither Obama nor Trump were inevitable- The future of China, the US, and globalizationThanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.
Welcome to the ninth episode of the Palladium Podcast, where we explore the future of governance and society. This week, Jonah Bennett and Wolf Tivy interview Samo Burja, founder of Bismarck Analysis, a political risk consulting firm, on his recent Botswana piece and his thoughts about China's Belt & Road in Africa. You can find Samo on Twitter and YouTube.
Samo Burja is a social scientist and founder of Bismarck Analysis which analyzes organizations and governments for clients. http://samoburja.com Twitter ► https://twitter.com/samoburja YouTube ► https://youtube.com/samoburja ******* Simulation is rebirthing the public intellectual by hosting the greatest multidisciplinary minds of our time. Build the future. Architect the frameworks and resource flows to maximize human potential. http://simulationseries.com ******* SUBSCRIBE TO SIMULATION ► YOUTUBE: http://bit.ly/SimYoTu ITUNES: http://bit.ly/SimulationiTunes INSTAGRAM: http://bit.ly/SimulationIG TWITTER: http://bit.ly/SimulationTwitter ******* FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/SimulationFB SOUNDCLOUD: http://bit.ly/SimulationSC LINKEDIN: http://bit.ly/SimulationLinkedIn PATREON: http://bit.ly/SimulationPatreon CRYPTO: http://bit.ly/SimCrypto ******* NUANCE-DRIVEN DISCOURSE ► http://bit.ly/SimulationTG WATCH ALLEN'S TEDx TALK ► http://bit.ly/AllenTEDx FOLLOW ALLEN ► INSTAGRAM: http://bit.ly/AllenIG TWITTER: http://bit.ly/AllenT ******* LIST OF THOUGHT-PROVOKING QUESTIONS ► http://simulationseries.com/the-list GET IN TOUCH ► simulationseries@gmail.com
Introduction: My guest today is Samo Burja, the founder of Bismarck Analysis, a firm that analyzes institutions, governments, and companies for high net worth individuals. There’s never been an immortal human society and Samo is on a quest to find out why. Known for his Great Founder Theory, Samo’s research focuses on the causes of societal decay and flourishing. In this episode, we talk about Samo's Great Founder Theory through the lens of Apple, Amazon and the myths that drive Silicon Valley. Then, we move to a discussion of geopolitical strategy where we talk about China, the Suez Canal, the Panama Canal, and the importance of Eurasia from a geopolitical perspective, before we jump around between ideas like intellectual dark matter, knowledge transfer, and the story of Singapore. I hope you enjoy this episode. LINKS: Find Samo online: Website Twitter Medium Linkedin People mentioned: Jordan Peterson Jeff Bezos Bill Gates Steve Jobs Peter Thiel René Girard Nassim Taleb Ben Shapiro Jon Stewart Edward Bernays Richard Feynman Tim Cook Elon Musk Wernher von Braun The Wright Brothers Dwight D. Eisenhower John F. Kennedy Neil Armstrong J. Edgar Hoover Satoshi Nakamoto Lee Kuan Yew Henry Bessemer Carl Friedrich Gauss Books mentioned: Zero to One Propaganda The Sovereign Individual Other mentions: Great founder theory (Samo’s article) Amazon Apple Facebook SpaceX Paypal Kayfabe The Daily Show Ford Tesla Walt Disney NASA Man In Space, Man and the Moon, Mars and Beyond (documentaries) The Manhattan Project FBI How Roman Emperors Handled the Succession Problem (Samo’s article) Bitcoin Empire Theory Part I and Empire Theory Part II (Samo’s articles) The Heartland Theory SHOW TOPICS 2:15 - Silicon Valley being a great way to understand the great founder theory and discussion on great founders of our time. Discussion on companies later and the skills necessary for a successful company. 9:30 - Samo on Jeff Bezos’ and learning from Amazon’s ability to communicate effectively. Discussion on the bar-raiser concept within Amazon that negates the typical long-term decline of employee quality. 14:18 - Speaking on retaining people within a company and how Amazon does this effectively. Also, how a lot of the ideas around talent and institutions in Silicon Valley have come from Peter Thiel. How him and his book, Zero to One, factors into these ideas. 19:46 - Samo’s experience living under communism for a few years in Slovenia, a bit on his background, and discussion on communism itself. 25:38 - The different ways of judging and trusting institutions and the world in general. Some examples of this and the best ways to go about trusting something, as well. Living in an attention-based economy. 38:08 - How to go about building truth-based institutions within an attention-based economy and some thoughts on this. Discussion on the tradeoffs of stability and dynamism. 45:28 - Thoughts on how to build the right incentives to promote regeneration and continual growth within a society. Speaking on NASA, it’s creation, and its powerful vision in the past. A bit on the origins of the FBI, as well 56:37 - The design of an institution and the natural course of them. Thoughts on handling and improving the problem of succession. 1:02:55 - The role of death in institutions and how iconic deaths may influence major events and preserve institutions. 1:07:06 - Samo’s belief on who controls Eurasia, controls the world. America’s incentive to have some tension in Europe. Discussion on the relation between a countries economy, its naval force, and its geographical location. 1:12:15 - The Sovereign Individual thesis versus the large nation-states and some discussion on this. Thoughts on tracking every computer and a user's actions. The empowerment of people by technology. A bit on nationalism and tying it to smaller communities. 1:18:13 - Lee Kwan Yew and the radical transformation of Singapore, a bit of history and importance on the Suez Canal and the Panama Canal, and discussion on Samo’s term, intellectual dark matter. 1:29:55 - How we might be able to teach tacit knowledge, the advantage of video with this, and some examples of learning tacit knowledge. How education should be and how Samo learns and consumes information. 1:37:20 - What Samo would have said to himself and done differently ten years ago in terms of learning through conversation and from people more effectively. The significance of gaining perspectives from multiple cultures. 1:38:36 - How Samo can help us travel more effectively in terms of heuristics to think through and with learning more tacit knowledge.
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