Podcast appearances and mentions of Robin Hanson

Why do cultures degenerate? At the recent Natal Conference, Robin Hanson cites biological and evolutionary factors. However, if one looks to Mises and the Austrians, we look squarely at human action that begins with the human mind and purposeful action.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/culture-degeneration-biological-or-ideological

Why do cultures degenerate? At the recent Natal Conference, Robin Hanson cites biological and evolutionary factors. However, if one looks to Mises and the Austrians, we look squarely at human action that begins with the human mind and purposeful action.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/culture-degeneration-biological-or-ideological

Could our planet be under the quiet watch of an alien civilization that's a million years ahead of us? In this fascinating conversation, economist and futurist Robin D. Hanson explores a bold and thought-provoking theory: that Earth might be subtly monitored by highly advanced extraterrestrials—perhaps as caretakers, silent observers, or participants in a vast, ancient experiment. Hanson, author of The Age of Em and co-originator of the "Great Filter" hypothesis, brings a unique interdisciplinary perspective, blending economics, evolutionary theory, and speculative futurism. We dive into the possibility that humanity may not be alone in its evolutionary journey—and that we might even share a distant, hidden past with these alien watchers.SHOW NOTESBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/podcast-ufo--5922140/support.

Are we alone in the universe—or already living alongside an ancient alien intelligence? In this mind-bending exploration, Professor Robin Hanson (George Mason University & Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute) breaks down the statistical odds that alien life exists and why it may have already been found in our own solar system. From AI-driven extraterrestrials silently observing us, to the chilling theory that humans are being domesticated by advanced alien civilizations, Hanson reveals where alien life is most likely to emerge, why UFO sightings might actually be real, and how our understanding of “quiet” vs. “loud” aliens could change everything we know about our future. Robin Hanson's Book, The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life: https://www.elephantinthebrain.com/ BialikBreakdown.comYouTube.com/mayimbialik

The shifts in cultural evolution are impacting our society in ways we can't ignore.Today, we're joined by Robin Hanson, economist and polymath from George Mason University. Robin is known for exploring questions that often remain unanswered, from prediction markets to the possibilities of alien civilizations.In this conversation, we explore how his Futarchy concept, after 26 years, has found its way into the world of crypto, the effects of cultural drift, and the intersection of population decline with advancing AI. We dive into how society has lost some of its evolutionary selection pressures and uncover some of the hidden challenges we face.Robin's insights on cultural drift and potential solutions at the scale of civilization will give you a new way of looking at the world.Join The Rollup Edge: https://members.therollup.coWebsite: https://therollup.co/Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1P6ZeYd..Podcast: https://therollup.co/category/podcastFollow us on X: https://www.x.com/therollupcoFollow Rob on X: https://www.x.com/robbie_rollupFollow Andy on X: https://www.x.com/ayyyeandyJoin our TG group: https://t.me/+8ARkR_YZixE5YjBhThe Rollup Disclosures: https://therollup.co/the-rollup-discl

As a listener of TOE you can get a special 20% off discount to The Economist and all it has to offer! Visit https://www.economist.com/toe What if you had a thousand doctors working for you 24/7, at virtually no cost? In this episode of Theories of Everything, a panel of leading AI and medical experts explores how “medical swarms” of intelligent agents could revolutionize healthcare, making personalized, concierge-level treatment accessible to all. This isn't science fiction, it's the near future and it will change everyone's life. Join My New Substack (Personal Writings): https://curtjaimungal.substack.com Listen on Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/SpotifyTOE Become a YouTube Member (Early Access Videos): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdWIQh9DGG6uhJk8eyIFl1w/join Links Mentioned: •⁠ ⁠Ekkolapto: https://www.ekkolapto.org/polymath •⁠ ⁠Ekkolapto's Longevity Hackathon: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLy5dPSW_KkniuHpoLwlzkYcxhxn50Mn0T •⁠ ⁠William Hahn's lab: https://mpcrlab.com/ •⁠ ⁠Michael Levin's presentation at ekkolapto: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Exdz2HKP7u0 •⁠ ⁠Gil Blander's InsideTracker (website): https://blog.insidetracker.com/ •⁠ ⁠Dan Elton's website: https://www.moreisdifferent.com/ •⁠ ⁠FAU's Sandbox: https://www.fau.edu/sandbox/ •⁠ ⁠Will Hahn on TOE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr4R7eh5f_M&t=1s •⁠ ⁠Will Hahn's in-person interview on TOE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fkg0uTA3qU •⁠ ⁠Michael Levin on TOE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8iFtaltX-s •⁠ ⁠Stephen Wolfram on TOE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YRlQQw0d-4 •⁠ ⁠Neil Turok's lecture on TOE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gwhqmPqRl4&list=PLZ7ikzmc6zlOYgTu7P4nfjYkv3mkikyBa&index=13 •⁠ ⁠Robin Hanson on TOE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEomfUU4PDs •⁠ Tyler Goldstein (YouTube): http://www.youtube.com/@theoryofeveryone GO TO THIS MAN'S YOUTUBE CHANNEL. HE HELPED WITH THE CAMERA WORK IMPROMPTU AND ALSO HAS A FANTASTIC CHANNEL ANALYZING THEORIES. THANK YOU, TYLER! •⁠ ⁠Joscha Bach on TOE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MNBxfrmfmI •⁠ ⁠Manolis Kellis on TOE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g56lxZwnaqg •⁠ ⁠Geoffrey Hinton on TOE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_DUft-BdIE Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction 4:43 A New Approach to Healthcare 5:33 AI in Medical Imaging 7:40 Cognitive Models 11:09 Education in Medicine 23:02 Exploring the Boundaries of AI 32:04 The Future of AI in Medicine 37:20 Swarming Agents 41:49 The Ethics of AI in Healthcare 45:17 AI into Clinical Practice 55:58 Preparing for an AI-Driven Future 1:15:03 The Human Element in Medicine 1:17:19 Emotional Intelligence in AI 1:20:11 Unified Theory in Medicine 1:21:31 Conclusion Support TOE on Patreon: https://patreon.com/curtjaimungal Twitter: https://twitter.com/TOEwithCurt Discord Invite: https://discord.com/invite/kBcnfNVwqs #science Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Minds Almost Meeting: Season 10, Episode 11.View the transcript for this episode here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mindsa⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠lmostmeeting.com/episodes/bsImagine two smart curious friendly and basically truth-seeking people, but from very different intellectual traditions. Traditions with different tools, priorities, and ground rules. What would they discuss? Would they talk past each other? Make any progress? Would anyone want to hear them? Economist Robin Hanson and philosopher Agnes Callard decided to find out.Visit the Minds Almost Meeting website here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mindsalmostmeeting.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Rula patients typically pay $15 per session when using insurance. Connect with quality therapists and mental health experts who specialize in you at https://www.rula.com/TOE #rulapod Try Huel with 15% OFF + Free Gift for New Customers today using my code theoriesofeverything at https://huel.com/theoriesofeverything . Fuel your best performance with Huel today! Is Earth being monitored by an advanced civilization one million years ahead of us? And does this alien civilization actually share an ancient past with humanity? Economist Robin Hanson explores a provocative theory suggesting that highly evolved extraterrestrials may be subtly observing us—either as caretakers or as part of a long-running experiment. From there, the conversation delves into the intricacies of academic funding and the peer review process. As a listener of TOE you can get a special 20% off discount to The Economist and all it has to offer! Visit https://www.economist.com/toe Join My New Substack (Personal Writings): https://curtjaimungal.substack.com Links Mentioned: - Robin's blog: https://www.overcomingbias.com/ - Robin's profile: https://economics.gmu.edu/people/rhanson - Robin's book: https://www.amazon.com/Age-Em-Work-Robots-Earth/dp/0198754620 - Tyler Cowen on TOE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwieLd7Lyc8&ab_channel=CurtJaimungal - Gregory Chaitin on TOE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoEuav8G6sY - Matthew Segal on TOE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeTm4fSXpbM - Daniel Van Zant's article on incentive markets: https://www.danielvanzant.com/p/breakthrough-incentive-markets - Michael Levin on TOE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8iFtaltX-s - Lue Elizondo on TOE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAmFlLfsZKM - Ross Coulthart on TOE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQnGcX7oxms Listen on Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/SpotifyTOE Become a YouTube Member (Early Access Videos): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdWIQh9DGG6uhJk8eyIFl1w/join Timestamps: 00:00 - Introduction 01:36 - The Great Filter 05:38 - Where Are The Aliens? 09:13 - UFOs 16:50 - Panspermia 23:05 - Alien Hierarchies 27:30 - Alien Culture & Motivations 33:18 - Probability of Aliens 39:18 - Truth 49:41 - Fall of Academia 01:11:27 - Peer Review 01:20:22 - Ranking Ideas 01:23:09 - The System is “Broken” Support TOE on Patreon: https://patreon.com/curtjaimungal Twitter: https://twitter.com/TOEwithCurt Discord Invite: https://discord.com/invite/kBcnfNVwqs #science #aliens Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm back, baby. I've been away traveling for podcasts and am excited to bring you new ones with Michael Levin, William Hahn, Robin Hanson, and Emily Riehl, coming up shortly. They're already recorded. I've been recovering from a terrible flu but pushed through it to bring you today's episode with Urs Schreiber. This one is quite mind-blowing. It's quite hairy mathematics, something called higher category theory, and how using this math (which examines the structure of structure) allows one manner of finding "something" from "nothing." Here, "nothing" means the empty set, and "something" is defined as fermions and even 11D supergravity. It's the first time this material has been presented in this manner. Enjoy. NOTE: Link to technical details are here from Urs Schreiber: https://ncatlab.org/schreiber/show/Peri+Pantheorias As a listener of TOE you can get a special 20% off discount to The Economist and all it has to offer! Visit https://www.economist.com/toe Join My New Substack (Personal Writings): https://curtjaimungal.substack.com Listen on Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/SpotifyTOE Become a YouTube Member (Early Access Videos): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdWIQh9DGG6uhJk8eyIFl1w/join Links Mentioned: - nLab website: https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/HomePage - Paper on category theory: https://people.math.osu.edu/cogdell.1/6112-Eilenberg&MacLane-www.pdf - “Higher Topos Theory for Physics” (Urs's talk): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GD20W6vxMI4 - “Higher Topos Theory for Physics” (Urs's paper): https://arxiv.org/pdf/2311.11026 - Stephen Wolfram on TOE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YRlQQw0d-4 - Feynman's thesis: https://faculty.washington.edu/seattle/physics541/2012-path-integrals/thesis.pdf - Differential cohomology in a cohesive ∞-topos (Urs's paper): https://arxiv.org/pdf/1310.7930 - M-Theory from the Superpoint (paper): https://arxiv.org/pdf/1702.01774 - Character Map in Non-Abelian Cohomology, The: Twisted, Differential, and Generalized (textbook): https://amzn.to/4bFuz7H - TOE's String Theory Iceberg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4PdPnQuwjY Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction 01:27 The Creation of nLab 04:36 Philosophy Meets Physics 07:55 The Role of Mathematical Language 09:32 Emergence from Nothing 16:25 Towards a Theory of Everything 22:21 The Problem with Modern Physics 25:31 Diving into Category Theory 35:30 Understanding Adjunctions 41:46 The Significance of Duality 52:54 Exploring Toposes 1:14:20 The UNEDA Lemma and Generalized Spaces 1:16:37 Charts in Physics 1:20:55 Introduction to Infinitesimal Disks 1:23:56 The Emergence of Supergeometry 1:27:33 Transitioning to Gauge Theories 1:28:11 Exploring Singularities in Physics 1:32:50 The Role of Superformal Spaces 1:36:44 Functors and Their Implications 1:40:51 From Nothing to Emergent Structures 1:43:04 Hegel's Influence on Modern Physics 1:54:07 Discovering Higher-Dimensional Structures 1:56:30 The Path to 11-Dimensional Supergravity 1:57:21 Universal Central Extensions 2:03:21 The Journey to M-Theory 2:11:19 Globalizing the Structure of Supergravity 2:15:36 Understanding Global Charges in Physics 2:23:31 Dirac's Insights into Gauge Potentials 2:30:21 The Quest for Non-Perturbative Physics 2:39:04 Conclusion Support TOE on Patreon: https://patreon.com/curtjaimungal Twitter: https://twitter.com/TOEwithCurt Discord Invite: https://discord.com/invite/kBcnfNVwqs #science #theoreticalphysics Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Minds Almost Meeting: Season 10, Episode 10.View the transcript for this episode here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mindsa⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠lmostmeeting.com/episodes/kafkas-the-castleImagine two smart curious friendly and basically truth-seeking people, but from very different intellectual traditions. Traditions with different tools, priorities, and ground rules. What would they discuss? Would they talk past each other? Make any progress? Would anyone want to hear them? Economist Robin Hanson and philosopher Agnes Callard decided to find out.Visit the Minds Almost Meeting website here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mindsalmostmeeting.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Minds Almost Meeting: Season 10, Episode 9.View the transcript for this episode here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mindsa⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠lmostmeeting.com/episodes/fertility-againImagine two smart curious friendly and basically truth-seeking people, but from very different intellectual traditions. Traditions with different tools, priorities, and ground rules. What would they discuss? Would they talk past each other? Make any progress? Would anyone want to hear them? Economist Robin Hanson and philosopher Agnes Callard decided to find out.Visit the Minds Almost Meeting website here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mindsalmostmeeting.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

On this episode of Crazy Wisdom, host Stewart Alsop speaks with Ivan Vendrov for a deep and thought-provoking conversation covering AI, intelligence, societal shifts, and the future of human-machine interaction. They explore the "bitter lesson" of AI—that scale and compute ultimately win—while discussing whether progress is stalling and what bottlenecks remain. The conversation expands into technology's impact on democracy, the centralization of power, the shifting role of the state, and even the mythology needed to make sense of our accelerating world. You can find more of Ivan's work at nothinghuman.substack.com or follow him on Twitter at @IvanVendrov.Check out this GPT we trained on the conversation!Timestamps00:00 Introduction and Setting00:21 The Bitter Lesson in AI02:03 Challenges in AI Data and Infrastructure04:03 The Role of User Experience in AI Adoption08:47 Evaluating Intelligence and Divergent Thinking10:09 The Future of AI and Society18:01 The Role of Big Tech in AI Development24:59 Humanism and the Future of Intelligence29:27 Exploring Kafka and Tolkien's Relevance29:50 Tolkien's Insights on Machine Intelligence30:06 Samuel Butler and Machine Sovereignty31:03 Historical Fascism and Machine Intelligence31:44 The Future of AI and Biotech32:56 Voice as the Ultimate Human-Computer Interface36:39 Social Interfaces and Language Models39:53 Javier Malay and Political Shifts in Argentina50:16 The State of Society in the U.S.52:10 Concluding Thoughts on Future ProspectsKey InsightsThe Bitter Lesson Still Holds, but AI Faces Bottlenecks – Ivan Vendrov reinforces Rich Sutton's "bitter lesson" that AI progress is primarily driven by scaling compute and data rather than human-designed structures. While this principle still applies, AI progress has slowed due to bottlenecks in high-quality language data and GPU availability. This suggests that while AI remains on an exponential trajectory, the next major leaps may come from new forms of data, such as video and images, or advancements in hardware infrastructure.The Future of AI Is Centralization and Fragmentation at the Same Time – The conversation highlights how AI development is pulling in two opposing directions. On one hand, large-scale AI models require immense computational resources and vast amounts of data, leading to greater centralization in the hands of Big Tech and governments. On the other hand, open-source AI, encryption, and decentralized computing are creating new opportunities for individuals and small communities to harness AI for their own purposes. The long-term outcome is likely to be a complex blend of both centralized and decentralized AI ecosystems.User Interfaces Are a Major Limiting Factor for AI Adoption – Despite the power of AI models like GPT-4, their real-world impact is constrained by poor user experience and integration. Vendrov suggests that AI has created a "UX overhang," where the intelligence exists but is not yet effectively integrated into daily workflows. Historically, technological revolutions take time to diffuse, as seen with the dot-com boom, and the current AI moment may be similar—where the intelligence exists but society has yet to adapt to using it effectively.Machine Intelligence Will Radically Reshape Cities and Social Structures – Vendrov speculates that the future will see the rise of highly concentrated AI-powered hubs—akin to "mile by mile by mile" cubes of data centers—where the majority of economic activity and decision-making takes place. This could create a stark divide between AI-driven cities and rural or off-grid communities that choose to opt out. He draws a parallel to Robin Hanson's Age of Em and suggests that those who best serve AI systems will hold power, while others may be marginalized or reduced to mere spectators in an AI-driven world.The Enlightenment's Individualism Is Being Challenged by AI and Collective Intelligence – The discussion touches on how Western civilization's emphasis on the individual may no longer align with the realities of intelligence and decision-making in an AI-driven era. Vendrov argues that intelligence is inherently collective—what matters is not individual brilliance but the ability to recognize and leverage diverse perspectives. This contradicts the traditional idea of intelligence as a singular, personal trait and suggests a need for new frameworks that incorporate AI into human networks in more effective ways.Javier Milei's Libertarian Populism Reflects a Global Trend Toward Radical Experimentation – The rise of Argentina's President Javier Milei exemplifies how economic desperation can drive societies toward bold, unconventional leaders. Vendrov and Alsop discuss how Milei's appeal comes not just from his radical libertarianism but also from his blunt honesty and willingness to challenge entrenched power structures. His movement, however, raises deeper questions about whether libertarianism alone can provide a stable social foundation, or if voluntary cooperation and civil society must be explicitly cultivated to prevent libertarian ideals from collapsing into chaos.AI, Mythology, and the Need for New Narratives – The conversation closes with a reflection on the power of mythology in shaping human understanding of technological change. Vendrov suggests that as AI reshapes the world, new myths will be needed to make sense of it—perhaps similar to Tolkien's elves fading as the age of men begins. He sees AI as part of an inevitable progression, where human intelligence gives way to something greater, but argues that this transition must be handled with care. The stories we tell about AI will shape whether we resist, collaborate, or simply fade into irrelevance in the face of machine intelligence.

Minds Almost Meeting: Season 10, Episode 8.View the transcript for this episode here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mindsa⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠lmostmeeting.com/episodes/on-woke⁠Imagine two smart curious friendly and basically truth-seeking people, but from very different intellectual traditions. Traditions with different tools, priorities, and ground rules. What would they discuss? Would they talk past each other? Make any progress? Would anyone want to hear them? Economist Robin Hanson and philosopher Agnes Callard decided to find out.Visit the Minds Almost Meeting website here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mindsalmostmeeting.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Minds Almost Meeting: Season 10, Episode 7.View the transcript for this episode here:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mindsa⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠lmostmeeting.com/episodes/two-cultures-againImagine two smart curious friendly and basically truth-seeking people, but from very different intellectual traditions. Traditions with different tools, priorities, and ground rules. What would they discuss? Would they talk past each other? Make any progress? Would anyone want to hear them? Economist Robin Hanson and philosopher Agnes Callard decided to find out.Visit the Minds Almost Meeting website here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mindsalmostmeeting.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

A flood of government regulations, mandates, and subsidies has not solved the United States' health care problems—they are the problem. They have driven the average employer-plan family premium to nearly $26,000—and then tossed families out of their health insurance when employees leave their jobs. Even as Obamacare creates an insurance shortage, it has nevertheless grown so unaffordable that enrollees earning $200,000 per year get $12,000 in subsidies. Growing federal debt threatens Medicare and Medicaid patients' access to necessary care.Reforms circulating on Capitol Hill are not up to the challenge. Some propose more regulations, mandates, and subsidies. Yet if that approach worked, it would have already. Even reforms that are directionally correct fall far short of what is necessary to restore individual rights and make health care more universal.At this two-panel forum, leading health policy scholars will offer meaningful and potentially bipartisan reforms that would bring relief to struggling patients, workers, and taxpayers.The first panel, “Who's Afraid of Cutting Health Spending?” (9:00 a.m.–10:30 a.m.), will feature Michael Cannon, Robin Hanson, and Mark Miller. Panelists will discuss the many opportunities to eliminate excessive spending—opportunities that close observers of Medicare and Medicaid know about but the public does not. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Friends of the pod, the Cal Bears return, this time with a World Championship Bronze medalist and an NCAA Champion in Lucas Henveaux and Robin Hanson. Both elite freestylers with Olympic experience, Lucas and Robin share insights on the ‘24-'25 edition of Cal swimming that has seen 17-straight top 2 finishes at NCAAs, an unprecedented run of success. This year, the attention all seems to be on high profile hires and transfers at Texas and Indiana, and Cal is just fine with the attention being elsewhere. Will this be the year the streak ends? Or will Cal once again arrive in March and remind everyone they know how to get it done in championship meets? Only time will tell, but in the meantime, enjoy a wide ranging chat with Lucas and Robin including how high pole vaulter Mondo Duplantis can take the world record to who the greatest Belgian cyclist is and how swimming could adopt golf's handicapping system. 

Minds Almost Meeting: Season 10, Episode 6. View the transcript for this episode here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mindsa⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠lmostmeeting.com/episodes/open-socrates Imagine two smart curious friendly and basically truth-seeking people, but from very different intellectual traditions. Traditions with different tools, priorities, and ground rules. What would they discuss? Would they talk past each other? Make any progress? Would anyone want to hear them? Economist Robin Hanson and philosopher Agnes Callard decided to find out. Visit the Minds Almost Meeting website here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mindsalmostmeeting.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Minds Almost Meeting: Season 10, Episode 5. View the transcript for this episode here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mindsa⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠lmostmeeting.com/episodes/perfection-vs-greatness Imagine two smart curious friendly and basically truth-seeking people, but from very different intellectual traditions. Traditions with different tools, priorities, and ground rules. What would they discuss? Would they talk past each other? Make any progress? Would anyone want to hear them? Economist Robin Hanson and philosopher Agnes Callard decided to find out. Visit the Minds Almost Meeting website here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mindsalmostmeeting.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Julian Gough sums up his career as follows: “I just sit in my room and write.” Well, I think being an acclaimed children's author, novelist, stage playwright, poet and top-ten Irish musician is a little more impressive than he's letting on… Oh, and I didn't even mention that he wrote the ending to the computer game Minecraft! His current project, The Egg and The Rock, puts all of this to shame. This book, which Julian is writing in public on Substack, seeks to do no less than redescribe the universe, arguing that is not some random, dead, purposeless sack of chemicals, but instead a living, evolving organism. Julian joins me to discuss why the arc of human evolution bends towards man-made black holes, the hidden catastrophe at the heart of materialist science, the strange life of subterranean ice aliens, and MUCH more! This was such an interesting conversation - I can't wait for you to hear it. For the full transcript, episode takeaways, and bucketloads of other goodies designed to make you go, “Hmm, that's interesting!”, check out our Substack. Important Links: Julian's Website The Egg and The Rock Julian's Twitter Show Notes: “I just sit in my room and write” Why write a book in public? Materialism & science's hidden catastrophe “The scientific method is in conflict with human nature” The faulty assumption at the heart of cosmology Big bangs, supermassive black holes & Darwinian evolution: A ~30 minute masterclass in cosmological natural selection “I'm predicting very, very large amounts of life in this universe” The strange life of subterranean ice aliens Could we spot man-made black holes? Bringing consciousness into physics Pulling back the curtain Julian as World Emperor MORE! Books & Articles Mentioned: The New Inquisition: Irrational Rationalism and the Citadel of Science; by Robert Anton Wilson Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge; by Paul Feyerabend What the Tortoise Said to Achilles; by Lewis Carroll The Life of the Cosmos; by Lee Smolin What Is Life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell; by Erwin Schrödinger Isis Unveiled: A Master-Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology; by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky The Bhagavad Gita Did the Universe evolve?; by Lee Smolin The Great Filter - Are We Almost Past It?; by Robin Hanson

Minds Almost Meeting: Season 10, Episode 2. View the transcript for this episode here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mindsa⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠lmostmeeting.com/episodes/fighting-vs-arguing Imagine two smart curious friendly and basically truth-seeking people, but from very different intellectual traditions. Traditions with different tools, priorities, and ground rules. What would they discuss? Would they talk past each other? Make any progress? Would anyone want to hear them? Economist Robin Hanson and philosopher Agnes Callard decided to find out. Visit the Minds Almost Meeting website here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mindsalmostmeeting.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

This episode was originally published on our sister podcast, web3 with a16z. If you're excited about the next generation of the internet, check out the show: https://link.chtbl.com/hrr_h-XCWe've heard a lot about the premise and the promise of prediction markets for a long time, but they finally hit the main stage with the most recent election. So what worked (and didn't) this time? Are they really better than pollsters, is polling dead? So in this conversation, we tease apart the hype from the reality of prediction markets, from the recent election to market foundations... going more deeply into the how, why, and where these markets work. We also discuss the design challenges and opportunities (including implications for builders throughout). And we also cover other information aggregation mechanisms -- from peer prediction to others -- given that prediction markets are part of a broader category of information-elicitation and information-aggregation mechanisms. Where do domain experts, superforecasters, pollsters, and journalists come in (and out)? Where do (and don't) blockchain and crypto technologies come in -- and what specific features (decentralization, transparency, real-time, open source, etc.) matter most, and in what contexts?  Finally, we discuss applications for prediction and decision markets -- things we could do right away to in the near-future to sci-fi -- touching on trends like futarchy, AI entering the market, DeSci, and more.  Our special expert guests are Alex Taborrok, professor of economics at George Mason University and Chair in Economics at the Mercatus Center; and Scott Duke Kominers, research partner at a16z crypto, and professor at Harvard Business School  -- both in conversation with Sonal Chokshi. As a reminder: None of the following should be taken as business, investment, legal, or tax advice; please see a16z.com/disclosures for more important information.  Resources:(from links to research mentioned to more on the topics discussed)The Use of Knowledge in Society by Friedrich Hayek (American Economic Review, 1945)Everything is priced in by rsd99 (r/wallstreetbets, 2019)Idea Futures (aka prediction markets, information markets) by Robin Hanson (1996)Auctions: The Social Construction of Value  by Charles SmithSocial value of public information by Stephen Morris and Hyun Song Shin (American Economic Review, December 2002)Using prediction markets to estimate the reproducibility of scientific research by Anna Dreber, Thomas Pfeiffer, Johan Almenberg, Siri Isaksson, Brad Wilson, Yiling Chen, Brian Nosek, and Magnus Johannesson (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (November 2015)A solution to the single-question crowd wisdom problem by Dražen Prelec, Sebastian Seung, and John McCoy (Nature, January 2017)Targeting high ability entrepreneurs using community information: Mechanism design in the field by Reshmaan Hussam, Natalia Rigol, and Benjamin Roth (American Economic Review, March 2022)Information aggregation mechanisms: concept, design, and implementation for a sales forecasting problem by Charles Plott and Kay-Yut Chen, Hewlett Packard Laboratories (March 2002)If I had a million [on deciding to dump the CEO or not] by Robin Hanson (2008)Futarchy: Vote values, but bet beliefs by Robin Hanson (2013)From prediction markets to info finance by Vitalik Buterin (November 2024)Composability is innovation by Linda Xie (June 2021)Composability is to software as compounding interest is to finance by Chris Dixon (October 2021)resources & research on DAOs, a16z crypto Stay Updated: Let us know what you think: https://ratethispodcast.com/a16zFind a16z on Twitter: https://twitter.com/a16zFind a16z on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/a16zSubscribe on your favorite podcast app: https://a16z.simplecast.com/Follow our host: https://twitter.com/stephsmithioPlease note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.

This week we strapped on a Motorola pager and stole a briefcase off our dad in order to look businessy enough to chat to the Batman of the B2B world, LinkedIn legend and co-founder of Evidenza, Peter Weinberg. Peter Weinberg has effectively grabbed B2B marketing by the ankles and dragged it out of the dull and dreary hole into which it had buried its head. World famous for his time in charge of the game-changing B2B institute at LinkedIn – alongside his pal Jon Lombardo – Peter is now the extraordinary human brains behind AI powered research platform Evidenza, where he continues to be a champion for the kind of B2B that's never bland. ///// Follow Peter on LinkedIn Here's his website Here is Rory Sutherland Eurostar TED Talk Timestamps (02:37) - Quickfire Questions (03:34) - Peter's Career Path (06:36) - Transition to Advertising (11:22) - The B2B Institute at LinkedIn (15:50) - Pivotal Moments in B2B Marketing (17:37) - Contrarian Views in Marketing (19:05) - The Role of Synthetic Data (24:32) - Launching Evidenza (30:50) - Validating Synthetic Research (34:13) - Scepticism Towards AI in Marketing (40:15) - AI and Advertising Effectiveness (45:45) - Using AI for Strategic Planning Peter's Book Recommendations are: Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson How Brands Grow by Bryon Sharp   Building Distinctive Brand Assets by Jenni Romaniuk  How Not To Plan – Les Binet & Sarah Carter Antifragile by Nassim Taleb  The Elephant In The Brain by Kevin Simler & Robin Hanson /////

with @atabarrok @skominers @smc90We've heard a lot about the premise and the promise of prediction markets for a long time, but they finally hit the main stage with the most recent election. So what worked (and didn't) this time? Are they better than pollsters, journalists, domain experts, superforecasters?So in this conversation, we tease apart the hype from the reality of prediction markets, from the recent election to market foundations... going more deeply into the how, why, and where these markets work. We also discuss the design challenges and opportunities, including implications for builders throughout. And we also cover other information aggregation mechanisms -- from peer prediction to others -- given that prediction markets are part of a broader category of information-elicitation and information-aggregation mechanisms.Where do (and don't) blockchain and crypto technologies come in -- and what specific features (decentralization, transparency, real-time, open source, etc.) matter most, and in what contexts? Finally, we discuss applications for prediction and decision markets -- things we could do right away to in the near-to distant future -- touching on everything from corporate decisions and scientific replication to trends like AI, DeSci, futarchy/ governance, and more?Our special expert guests are Alex Tabarrok, professor of economics at George Mason University and Chair in Economics at the Mercatus Center; and Scott Duke Kominers, research partner at a16z crypto, and professor at Harvard Business School  -- both in conversation with Sonal Chokshi.RESOURCES(from links to research mentioned to more on the topics discussed)The Use of Knowledge in Society by Friedrich Hayek (American Economic Review, 1945)Everything is priced in by rsd99 (r/wallstreetbets, 2019)Idea Futures (aka prediction markets, information markets) by Robin Hanson (1996)Auctions: The Social Construction of Value  by Charles SmithSocial value of public information by Stephen Morris and Hyun Song Shin (American Economic Review, December 2002)Using prediction markets to estimate the reproducibility of scientific research by Anna Dreber, Thomas Pfeiffer, Johan Almenberg, Siri Isaksson, Brad Wilson, Yiling Chen, Brian Nosek, and Magnus Johannesson (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (November 2015)A solution to the single-question crowd wisdom problem by Dražen Prelec, Sebastian Seung, and John McCoy (Nature, January 2017)Targeting high ability entrepreneurs using community information: Mechanism design in the field by Reshmaan Hussam, Natalia Rigol, and Benjamin Roth (American Economic Review, March 2022)Information aggregation mechanisms: concept, design, and implementation for a sales forecasting problem by Charles Plott and Kay-Yut Chen, Hewlett Packard Laboratories (March 2002)If I had a million [on deciding to dump the CEO or not] by Robin Hanson (2008)Futarchy: Vote values, but bet beliefs by Robin Hanson (2013)From prediction markets to info finance by Vitalik Buterin (November 2024)Composability is innovation by Linda Xie (June 2021)Composability is to software as compounding interest is to finance by Chris Dixon (October 2021)resources & research on DAOs, a16z crypto  

Minds Almost Meeting: Season 10, Episode 3. View the transcript for this episode here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mindsa⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠lmostmeeting.com/episodes/activism Imagine two smart curious friendly and basically truth-seeking people, but from very different intellectual traditions. Traditions with different tools, priorities, and ground rules. What would they discuss? Would they talk past each other? Make any progress? Would anyone want to hear them? Economist Robin Hanson and philosopher Agnes Callard decided to find out. Visit the Minds Almost Meeting website here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mindsalmostmeeting.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Our societies, our norms, our values are all shaped by stories from the past. Devdutt Pattanaik joins Amit Varma in episode 404 of The Seen and the Unseen to discuss his life, our society and why we should take mythology seriously. Note: This is Part 1 of a 12-hour episode, being uploaded in two parts now because Spotify and YouTube don't allow uploads over 12 hours. So if you are on another podcast app, just play the full version if it is there! (FOR FULL LINKED SHOW NOTES, GO TO SEENUNSEEN.IN.) Also check out 1. Devdutt Pattanaik on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Wikipedia, YouTube, Amazon and his own website. 2. Myth = Mithya: Decoding Hindu Mythology -- Devdutt Pattanaik. 3. The Girl Who Chose -- Devdutt Pattanaik. 4. The Boys Who Fought -- Devdutt Pattanaik. 5. Ramayana Versus Mahabharata -- Devdutt Pattanaik. 6. My Gita -- Devdutt Pattanaik. 7. Bahubali: 63 Insights into Jainism -- Devdutt Pattanaik. 8. Sati Savitri -- Devdutt Pattanaik. 9. Business Sutra -- Devdutt Pattanaik. 10. Ahimsa: 100 Reflections on the Harappan Civilization -- Devdutt Pattanaik. 11. Olympus -- Devdutt Pattanaik. 12. Eden -- Devdutt Pattanaik. 13. East vs West -- The Myths That Mystify -- Devdutt Pattanaik's 2009 TED Talk. 14. Today My Mother Came Home -- Devdutt Pattanaik. 15. The Incredible Curiosities of Mukulika Banerjee — Episode 276 of The Seen and the Unseen. 16. The Life and Times of Mrinal Pande — Episode 263 of The Seen and the Unseen. 17. Sara Rai Inhales Literature — Episode 255 of The Seen and the Unseen. 18. The Life and Times of Shanta Gokhale — Episode 311 of The Seen and the Unseen. 19. Yuganta -- Irawati Karve. 20. Women in Indian History — Episode 144 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ira Mukhoty). 21. The Jewel in the Crown -- BBC TV series. 22. Heat and Dust -- James Ivory. 23. The Sexual Outlaw -- John Rechy. 24. Bombay Dost and Gay Bombay. 25. The Double ‘Thank You' Moment — John Stossel. 26. The Kama Sutra. 27. Liberty -- Isaiah Berlin. 28. Thought and Choice in Chess -- Adriaan de Groot. 29. The Seven Basic Plots -- Christopher Booker. 30. The Seven Basic Plots -- Episode 69 of Everything is Everything. 31. The Hero with a Thousand Faces -- Joseph Campbell. 32. The Big Questions -- Steven Landsburg. 33. 300 Ramayanas — AK Ramanujan. 33. The egg came before the chicken. 34. The Evolution of Cooperation — Robert Axelrod. 35. The Trees -- Philip Larkin. 36. Who We Are and How We Got Here — David Reich. 37. Early Indians — Tony Joseph. 38. Tony Joseph's episode on The Seen and the Unseen. 39. A Life in Indian Politics — Episode 149 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Jayaprakash Narayan). 40. The BJP Before Modi — Episode 202 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Vinay Sitapati). 41. Jugalbandi -- Vinay Sitapati. 42. Perfect Days -- Wim Wenders. 43. The Loneliness of the Indian Woman — Episode 259 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Shrayana Bhattacharya). 44. The Loneliness of the Indian Man — Episode 303 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Nikhil Taneja). 45. Mary Wollstonecraft and bell hooks. 46. If India Was Five Days Old -- Devdutt Pattanaik. 47. The Road to Freedom — Arthur C Brooks. 48. The Master and His Emissary -- Iain McGilchrist. 49. This Be The Verse — Philip Larkin. 50. Human -- Michael Gazzaniga. 51. The Elephant in the Brain — Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson. 52. The Blank Slate -- Steven Pinker. 53. Amitava Kumar Finds the Breath of Life — Episode 265 of The Seen and the Unseen. 54. Wanderers, Kings, Merchants — Peggy Mohan. 55. Understanding India Through Its Languages — Episode 232 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Peggy Mohan). 56. The Reformers -- Episode 28 of Everything is Everything. 57. The Golden Bough -- James Frazer. 58. Myth And Reality: Studies In The Formation Of Indian Culture -- DD Kosambi. 59. Srimad Bhagavatam -- Kamala Subramaniam. 60. Boris Vallejo on Instagram, Wikipedia and his own website. 61. The Last Temptation Of Christ -- Nikos Kazantzakis. 62. The Last Temptation Of Christ -- Martin Scorcese. 63. Jeff Bezos on The Lex Fridman Podcast.  64. The Poem of the Killing of Meghnad -- Michael Madhusudan Dutt. 65. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil — Hannah Arendt. 66. The Crown -- Created by Peter Morgan. 67. Profit = Philanthropy — Amit Varma. 68. Imaginary Number — Vijay Seshadri. 69. The Buddha's Footprint -- Johan Elverskog. 70. A Prehistory of Hinduism -- Manu Devadevan. 71. The ‘Early Medieval' Origins of India -- Manu Devadevan. 72. Unmasking Buddhism -- Bernard Faure. 73. The Red Thread -- Bernard Faure. 74. The Power of Denial -- Bernard Faure. 75. The Thousand and One Lives of the Buddha -- Bernard Faure. 76. A Modern Look At Ancient Chinese Theory Of Language -- Chad Hansen. 77. Hermann Kulke, Umakant Mishra and Ganesh Devy on Amazon. 78. The Hours -- Michael Cunningham. 79. The Hours -- Stephen Daldry. 79. Ancestral Dravidian languages in Indus Civilization -- Bahata Ansumali Mukhopadhyay. 80. Myth -- Laurence Coupe. This episode is sponsored by Rang De, a platform that enables individuals to invest in farmers, rural entrepreneurs and artisans. Amit Varma and Ajay Shah have launched a new course called Life Lessons, which aims to be a launchpad towards learning essential life skills all of you need. For more details, and to sign up, click here. Amit and Ajay also bring out a weekly YouTube show, Everything is Everything. Have you watched it yet? You must! And have you read Amit's newsletter? Subscribe right away to The India Uncut Newsletter! It's free! Also check out Amit's online course, The Art of Clear Writing. Episode art: ‘Tell' by Simahina.

Our societies, our norms, our values are all shaped by stories from the past. Devdutt Pattanaik joins Amit Varma in episode 404 of The Seen and the Unseen to discuss his life, our society and why we should take mythology seriously. Note: This is Part 2 of a 12-hour episode, being uploaded in two parts now because Spotify and YouTube don't allow uploads over 12 hours. So do listen to Part 1 first -- and if you are on another podcast app, just play the full version if it is there! (FOR FULL LINKED SHOW NOTES, GO TO SEENUNSEEN.IN.) Also check out 1. Devdutt Pattanaik on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Wikipedia, YouTube, Amazon and his own website. 2. Myth = Mithya: Decoding Hindu Mythology -- Devdutt Pattanaik. 3. The Girl Who Chose -- Devdutt Pattanaik. 4. The Boys Who Fought -- Devdutt Pattanaik. 5. Ramayana Versus Mahabharata -- Devdutt Pattanaik. 6. My Gita -- Devdutt Pattanaik. 7. Bahubali: 63 Insights into Jainism -- Devdutt Pattanaik. 8. Sati Savitri -- Devdutt Pattanaik. 9. Business Sutra -- Devdutt Pattanaik. 10. Ahimsa: 100 Reflections on the Harappan Civilization -- Devdutt Pattanaik. 11. Olympus -- Devdutt Pattanaik. 12. Eden -- Devdutt Pattanaik. 13. East vs West -- The Myths That Mystify -- Devdutt Pattanaik's 2009 TED Talk. 14. Today My Mother Came Home -- Devdutt Pattanaik. 15. The Incredible Curiosities of Mukulika Banerjee — Episode 276 of The Seen and the Unseen. 16. The Life and Times of Mrinal Pande — Episode 263 of The Seen and the Unseen. 17. Sara Rai Inhales Literature — Episode 255 of The Seen and the Unseen. 18. The Life and Times of Shanta Gokhale — Episode 311 of The Seen and the Unseen. 19. Yuganta -- Irawati Karve. 20. Women in Indian History — Episode 144 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ira Mukhoty). 21. The Jewel in the Crown -- BBC TV series. 22. Heat and Dust -- James Ivory. 23. The Sexual Outlaw -- John Rechy. 24. Bombay Dost and Gay Bombay. 25. The Double ‘Thank You' Moment — John Stossel. 26. The Kama Sutra. 27. Liberty -- Isaiah Berlin. 28. Thought and Choice in Chess -- Adriaan de Groot. 29. The Seven Basic Plots -- Christopher Booker. 30. The Seven Basic Plots -- Episode 69 of Everything is Everything. 31. The Hero with a Thousand Faces -- Joseph Campbell. 32. The Big Questions -- Steven Landsburg. 33. 300 Ramayanas — AK Ramanujan. 33. The egg came before the chicken. 34. The Evolution of Cooperation — Robert Axelrod. 35. The Trees -- Philip Larkin. 36. Who We Are and How We Got Here — David Reich. 37. Early Indians — Tony Joseph. 38. Tony Joseph's episode on The Seen and the Unseen. 39. A Life in Indian Politics — Episode 149 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Jayaprakash Narayan). 40. The BJP Before Modi — Episode 202 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Vinay Sitapati). 41. Jugalbandi -- Vinay Sitapati. 42. Perfect Days -- Wim Wenders. 43. The Loneliness of the Indian Woman — Episode 259 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Shrayana Bhattacharya). 44. The Loneliness of the Indian Man — Episode 303 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Nikhil Taneja). 45. Mary Wollstonecraft and bell hooks. 46. If India Was Five Days Old -- Devdutt Pattanaik. 47. The Road to Freedom — Arthur C Brooks. 48. The Master and His Emissary -- Iain McGilchrist. 49. This Be The Verse — Philip Larkin. 50. Human -- Michael Gazzaniga. 51. The Elephant in the Brain — Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson. 52. The Blank Slate -- Steven Pinker. 53. Amitava Kumar Finds the Breath of Life — Episode 265 of The Seen and the Unseen. 54. Wanderers, Kings, Merchants — Peggy Mohan. 55. Understanding India Through Its Languages — Episode 232 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Peggy Mohan). 56. The Reformers -- Episode 28 of Everything is Everything. 57. The Golden Bough -- James Frazer. 58. Myth And Reality: Studies In The Formation Of Indian Culture -- DD Kosambi. 59. Srimad Bhagavatam -- Kamala Subramaniam. 60. Boris Vallejo on Instagram, Wikipedia and his own website. 61. The Last Temptation Of Christ -- Nikos Kazantzakis. 62. The Last Temptation Of Christ -- Martin Scorcese. 63. Jeff Bezos on The Lex Fridman Podcast.  64. The Poem of the Killing of Meghnad -- Michael Madhusudan Dutt. 65. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil — Hannah Arendt. 66. The Crown -- Created by Peter Morgan. 67. Profit = Philanthropy — Amit Varma. 68. Imaginary Number — Vijay Seshadri. 69. The Buddha's Footprint -- Johan Elverskog. 70. A Prehistory of Hinduism -- Manu Devadevan. 71. The ‘Early Medieval' Origins of India -- Manu Devadevan. 72. Unmasking Buddhism -- Bernard Faure. 73. The Red Thread -- Bernard Faure. 74. The Power of Denial -- Bernard Faure. 75. The Thousand and One Lives of the Buddha -- Bernard Faure. 76. A Modern Look At Ancient Chinese Theory Of Language -- Chad Hansen. 77. Hermann Kulke, Umakant Mishra and Ganesh Devy on Amazon. 78. The Hours -- Michael Cunningham. 79. The Hours -- Stephen Daldry. 79. Ancestral Dravidian languages in Indus Civilization -- Bahata Ansumali Mukhopadhyay. 80. Myth -- Laurence Coupe. This episode is sponsored by Rang De, a platform that enables individuals to invest in farmers, rural entrepreneurs and artisans. Amit Varma and Ajay Shah have launched a new course called Life Lessons, which aims to be a launchpad towards learning essential life skills all of you need. For more details, and to sign up, click here. Amit and Ajay also bring out a weekly YouTube show, Everything is Everything. Have you watched it yet? You must! And have you read Amit's newsletter? Subscribe right away to The India Uncut Newsletter! It's free! Also check out Amit's online course, The Art of Clear Writing. Episode art: ‘Tell' by Simahina.

Our societies, our norms, our values are all shaped by stories from the past. Devdutt Pattanaik joins Amit Varma in episode 404 of The Seen and the Unseen to discuss his life, our society and why we should take mythology seriously. (FOR FULL LINKED SHOW NOTES, GO TO SEENUNSEEN.IN.) Also check out 1. Devdutt Pattanaik on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Wikipedia, YouTube, Amazon and his own website. 2. Myth = Mithya: Decoding Hindu Mythology -- Devdutt Pattanaik. 3. The Girl Who Chose -- Devdutt Pattanaik. 4. The Boys Who Fought -- Devdutt Pattanaik. 5. Ramayana Versus Mahabharata -- Devdutt Pattanaik. 6. My Gita -- Devdutt Pattanaik. 7. Bahubali: 63 Insights into Jainism -- Devdutt Pattanaik. 8. Sati Savitri -- Devdutt Pattanaik. 9. Business Sutra -- Devdutt Pattanaik. 10. Ahimsa: 100 Reflections on the Harappan Civilization -- Devdutt Pattanaik. 11. Olympus -- Devdutt Pattanaik. 12. Eden -- Devdutt Pattanaik. 13. East vs West -- The Myths That Mystify -- Devdutt Pattanaik's 2009 TED Talk. 14. Today My Mother Came Home -- Devdutt Pattanaik. 15. The Incredible Curiosities of Mukulika Banerjee — Episode 276 of The Seen and the Unseen. 16. The Life and Times of Mrinal Pande — Episode 263 of The Seen and the Unseen. 17. Sara Rai Inhales Literature — Episode 255 of The Seen and the Unseen. 18. The Life and Times of Shanta Gokhale — Episode 311 of The Seen and the Unseen. 19. Yuganta -- Irawati Karve. 20. Women in Indian History — Episode 144 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ira Mukhoty). 21. The Jewel in the Crown -- BBC TV series. 22. Heat and Dust -- James Ivory. 23. The Sexual Outlaw -- John Rechy. 24. Bombay Dost and Gay Bombay. 25. The Double ‘Thank You' Moment — John Stossel. 26. The Kama Sutra. 27. Liberty -- Isaiah Berlin. 28. Thought and Choice in Chess -- Adriaan de Groot. 29. The Seven Basic Plots -- Christopher Booker. 30. The Seven Basic Plots -- Episode 69 of Everything is Everything. 31. The Hero with a Thousand Faces -- Joseph Campbell. 32. The Big Questions -- Steven Landsburg. 33. 300 Ramayanas — AK Ramanujan. 33. The egg came before the chicken. 34. The Evolution of Cooperation — Robert Axelrod. 35. The Trees -- Philip Larkin. 36. Who We Are and How We Got Here — David Reich. 37. Early Indians — Tony Joseph. 38. Tony Joseph's episode on The Seen and the Unseen. 39. A Life in Indian Politics — Episode 149 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Jayaprakash Narayan). 40. The BJP Before Modi — Episode 202 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Vinay Sitapati). 41. Jugalbandi -- Vinay Sitapati. 42. Perfect Days -- Wim Wenders. 43. The Loneliness of the Indian Woman — Episode 259 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Shrayana Bhattacharya). 44. The Loneliness of the Indian Man — Episode 303 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Nikhil Taneja). 45. Mary Wollstonecraft and bell hooks. 46. If India Was Five Days Old -- Devdutt Pattanaik. 47. The Road to Freedom — Arthur C Brooks. 48. The Master and His Emissary -- Iain McGilchrist. 49. This Be The Verse — Philip Larkin. 50. Human -- Michael Gazzaniga. 51. The Elephant in the Brain — Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson. 52. The Blank Slate -- Steven Pinker. 53. Amitava Kumar Finds the Breath of Life — Episode 265 of The Seen and the Unseen. 54. Wanderers, Kings, Merchants — Peggy Mohan. 55. Understanding India Through Its Languages — Episode 232 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Peggy Mohan). 56. The Reformers -- Episode 28 of Everything is Everything. 57. The Golden Bough -- James Frazer. 58. Myth And Reality: Studies In The Formation Of Indian Culture -- DD Kosambi. 59. Srimad Bhagavatam -- Kamala Subramaniam. 60. Boris Vallejo on Instagram, Wikipedia and his own website. 61. The Last Temptation Of Christ -- Nikos Kazantzakis. 62. The Last Temptation Of Christ -- Martin Scorcese. 63. Jeff Bezos on The Lex Fridman Podcast.  64. The Poem of the Killing of Meghnad -- Michael Madhusudan Dutt. 65. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil — Hannah Arendt. 66. The Crown -- Created by Peter Morgan. 67. Profit = Philanthropy — Amit Varma. 68. Imaginary Number — Vijay Seshadri. 69. The Buddha's Footprint -- Johan Elverskog. 70. A Prehistory of Hinduism -- Manu Devadevan. 71. The ‘Early Medieval' Origins of India -- Manu Devadevan. 72. Unmasking Buddhism -- Bernard Faure. 73. The Red Thread -- Bernard Faure. 74. The Power of Denial -- Bernard Faure. 75. The Thousand and One Lives of the Buddha -- Bernard Faure. 76. A Modern Look At Ancient Chinese Theory Of Language -- Chad Hansen. 77. Hermann Kulke, Umakant Mishra and Ganesh Devy on Amazon. 78. The Hours -- Michael Cunningham. 79. The Hours -- Stephen Daldry. 79. Ancestral Dravidian languages in Indus Civilization -- Bahata Ansumali Mukhopadhyay. 80. Myth -- Laurence Coupe. This episode is sponsored by Rang De, a platform that enables individuals to invest in farmers, rural entrepreneurs and artisans. Amit Varma and Ajay Shah have launched a new course called Life Lessons, which aims to be a launchpad towards learning essential life skills all of you need. For more details, and to sign up, click here. Amit and Ajay also bring out a weekly YouTube show, Everything is Everything. Have you watched it yet? You must! And have you read Amit's newsletter? Subscribe right away to The India Uncut Newsletter! It's free! Also check out Amit's online course, The Art of Clear Writing. Episode art: ‘Story' by Simahina.

Minds Almost Meeting: Season 10, Episode 2. View the transcript for this episode here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mindsa⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠lmostmeeting.com/episodes/potential-vs-achievement Imagine two smart curious friendly and basically truth-seeking people, but from very different intellectual traditions. Traditions with different tools, priorities, and ground rules. What would they discuss? Would they talk past each other? Make any progress? Would anyone want to hear them? Economist Robin Hanson and philosopher Agnes Callard decided to find out. Visit the Minds Almost Meeting website here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mindsalmostmeeting.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Minds Almost Meeting: Season 10, Episode 1. View the transcript for this episode here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mindsa⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠lmostmeeting.com/episodes/polls-vs-prediction-markets Imagine two smart curious friendly and basically truth-seeking people, but from very different intellectual traditions. Traditions with different tools, priorities, and ground rules. What would they discuss? Would they talk past each other? Make any progress? Would anyone want to hear them? Economist Robin Hanson and philosopher Agnes Callard decided to find out. Visit the Minds Almost Meeting website here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mindsalmostmeeting.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

In this episode of Faster, Please! — The Podcast, I talk with economist Robin Hanson about a) how much technological change our society will undergo in the foreseeable future, b) what form we want that change to take, and c) how much we can ever reasonably predict.Hanson is an associate professor of economics at George Mason University. He was formerly a research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford, and is the author of the Overcoming Bias Substack. In addition, he is the author of the 2017 book, The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life, as well as the 2016 book, The Age of Em: Work, Love, and Life When Robots Rule the Earth.In This Episode* Innovation is clumpy (1:21)* A history of AI advancement (3:25)* The tendency to control new tech (9:28)* The fallibility of forecasts (11:52)* The risks of fertility-rate decline (14:54)* Window of opportunity for space (18:49)* Public prediction markets (21:22)* A culture of calculated risk (23:39)Below is a lightly edited transcript of our conversationInnovation is Clumpy (1:21)Do you think that the tech advances of recent years — obviously in AI, and what we're seeing with reusable rockets, or CRISPR, or different energy advances, fusion, perhaps, even Ozempic — do you think that the collective cluster of these technologies has put humanity on a different path than perhaps it was on 10 years ago?. . . most people don't notice just how much stuff is changing behind the scenes in order for the economy to double every 15 or 20 years.That's a pretty big standard. As you know, the world has been growing exponentially for a very long time, and new technologies have been appearing for a very long time, and the economy doubles roughly every 15 or 20 years, and that can't happen without a whole lot of technological change, so most people don't notice just how much stuff is changing behind the scenes in order for the economy to double every 15 or 20 years. So to say that we're going more than that is really a high standard here. I don't think it meets that standard. Maybe the standard it meets is to say people were worried about maybe a stagnation or slowdown a decade or two ago, and I think this might weaken your concerns about that. I think you might say, well, we're still on target.Innovation's clumpy. It doesn't just out an entirely smooth . . . There are some lumpy ones once in a while, lumpier innovations than usual, and those boost higher than expected, sometimes lower than expected sometimes, and maybe in the last ten years we've had a higher-than-expected clump. The main thing that does is make you not doubt as much as you did when you had the lower-than-expected clump in the previous 10 years or 20 years because people had seen this long-term history and they thought, “Lately we're not seeing so much. I wonder if this is done. I wonder if we're running out.” I think the last 10 years tells you: well, no, we're kind of still on target. We're still having big important advances, as we have for two centuries.A history of AI advancement (3:25)People who are especially enthusiastic about the recent advances with AI, would you tell them their baseline should probably be informed by economic history rather than science fiction?[Y]es, if you're young, and you haven't seen the world for decades, you might well believe that we are almost there, we're just about to automate everything — but we're not.By technical history! We have 70-odd years of history of AI. I was an AI researcher full-time from '84 to '93. If you look at the long sweep of AI history, we've had some pretty big advances. We couldn't be where we are now without a lot of pretty big advances all along the way. You just think about the very first digital computer in 1950 or something and all the things we've seen, we have made large advances — and they haven't been completely smooth, they've come in a bit of clumps.I was enticed into the field in 1984 because of a recent set of clumps then, and for a century, roughly every 30 years, we've had a burst of concern about automation and AI, and we've had big concern in the sense people said, “Are we almost there? Are we about to have pretty much all jobs automated?” They said that in the 1930s, they said it in the 1960s — there was a presidential commission in the 1960s: “What if all the jobs get automated?” I jumped in in the late '80s when there was a big burst there, and I as a young graduate student said, “Gee, if I don't get in now, it'll all be over soon,” because I heard, “All the jobs are going to be automated soon!”And now, in the last decade or so, we've had another big burst, and I think people who haven't seen that history, it feels to them like it felt to me in 1984: “Wow, unprecedented advances! Everybody's really excited! Maybe we're almost there. Maybe if I jump in now, I'll be part of the big push over the line to just automate everything.” That was exciting, it was tempting, I was naïve, and I was sucked in, and we're now in another era like that. Yes, if you're young, and you haven't seen the world for decades, you might well believe that we are almost there, we're just about to automate everything — but we're not.I like that you mentioned the automation scare of the '60s. Just going back and looking at that, it really surprised me how prevalent and widespread and how serious people took that. I mean, you can find speeches by Martin Luther King talking about how our society is going to deal with the computerization of everything. So it does seem to be a recurrent fear. What would you need to see to think it is different this time?The obvious relevant parameter to be tracking is the percentage of world income that goes to automation, and that has been creeping up over the decades, but it's still less than five percent.What is that statistic?If you look at the percentage of the economy that goes to computer hardware and software, or other mechanisms of automation, you're still looking at less than five percent of the world economy. So it's been creeping up, maybe decades ago it was three percent, even one percent in 1960, but it's creeping up slowly, and obviously, when that gets to be 80 percent, game over, the economy has been replaced — but that number is creeping up slowly, and you can track it, so when you start seeing that number going up much faster or becoming a large number, then that's the time to say, “Okay, looks like we're close. Maybe automation will, in fact, take over most jobs, when it's getting most of world income.”If you're looking at economic statistics, and you're looking at different forecasts, whether by the Fed or CBO or Wall Street banks and the forecasts are, “Well, we expect, maybe because of AI, productivity growth to be 0.4 percentage points higher over this kind of time. . .” Those kinds of numbers where we're talking about a tenth of a point here, that's not the kind of singularity-emergent world that some people think or hope or expect that we're on.Absolutely. If you've got young enthusiastic tech people, et cetera — and they're exaggerating. The AI companies, even they're trying to push as big a dramatic images they can. And then all the stodgy conservative old folks, they're afraid of seeming behind the times, and not up with things, and not getting it — that was the big phrase in the Internet Boom: Who “gets it” that this is a new thing?I'm proud to be a human, to have been part of the civilization to have done this . . . but we've seen that for 70 years: new technologies, we get excited, we try them out, we try to apply them, and that's part of what progress is.Now it would be #teamgetsit.Exactly, something like that. They're trying to lean into it, they're trying to give it the best spin they can, but they have some self-respect, so they're going to give you, “Wow 0.4 percent!” They'll say, “That's huge! Wow, this is a really big thing, everybody should be into this!” But they can't go above 0.4 percent because they've got some common sense here. But we've even seen management consulting firms over the last decade or so make predictions that 10 years in the future, half all jobs would be automated. So we've seen this long history of these really crazy extreme predictions into a decade, and none of those remotely happened, of course. But people do want to be in with the latest thing, and this is obviously the latest round of technology, it's impressive. I'm proud to be a human, to have been part of the civilization to have done this, and I'd like to try them out, and see what I can do with them, and think of where they could go. That's all exciting and fun, but we've seen that for 70 years: new technologies, we get excited, we try them out, we try to apply them, and that's part of what progress is. The tendency to control new tech (9:28)Not to talk just about AI, but do you think AI is important enough that policymakers need to somehow guide the technology to a certain outcome? Daron Acemoglu, one of the Nobel Prize winners, has for quite some time, and certainly recently, said that this technology needs to be guided by policymakers so that it helps people, it helps workers, it creates new tasks, it creates new things for them to do, not automate away their jobs or automate a bunch of tasks.Do you think that there's something special about this technology that we need to guide it to some sort of outcome?I think those sort of people would say that about any new technology that seemed like it was going to be important. They are not actually distinguishing AI from other technologies. This is just what they say about everything.It could be “technology X,” we must guide it to the outcome that I have already determined.As long as you've said, “X is new, X is exciting, a lot of things seem to depend on X,” then their answer would be, “We need to guide it.” It wouldn't really matter what the details of X were. That's just how they think about society and technology. I don't see anything distinctive about this, per se, in that sense, other than the fact that — look, in the long run, it's huge.Space, in the long run, is huge, because obviously in the long run almost everything will be in space, so clearly, eventually, space will be the vast majority of everything. That doesn't mean we need to guide space now or to do anything different about it, per se. At the moment, space is pretty small, and it's pretty pedestrian, but it's exciting, and the same for AI. At the moment, AI is pretty small, minor, AI is not remotely threatening to cause harm in our world today. If you look about harmful technologies, this is way down the scale. Demonstrated harms of AI in the last 10 years are minuscule compared to things like construction equipment, or drugs, or even television, really. This is small.Ladders for climbing up on your roof to clean out the gutters, that's a very dangerous technology.Yeah, somebody should be looking into that. We should be guiding the ladder industry to make sure they don't cause harm in the world.The fallibility of forecasts (11:52)I'm not sure how much confidence we should ever have on long-term economic forecasts, but have you seen any reason to think that they might be less reliable than they always have been? That we might be approaching some sort of change? That those 50-year forecasts of entitlement spending might be all wrong because the economy's going to be growing so much faster, or the longevity is going to be increasing so much faster?Previously, the world had been doubling roughly every thousand years, and that had been going on for maybe 10,000 years, and then, within the space of a century, we switched to doubling roughly every 15 or 20 years. That's a factor of 60 increase in the growth rate, and it happened after a previous transition from forging to farming, roughly 10 doublings before.It was just a little over two centuries ago when the world saw this enormous revolution. Previously, the world had been doubling roughly every thousand years, and that had been going on for maybe 10,000 years, and then, within the space of a century, we switched to doubling roughly every 15 or 20 years. That's a factor of 60 increase in the growth rate, and it happened after a previous transition from forging to farming, roughly 10 doublings before.So you might say we can't trust these trends to continue maybe more than 10 doublings, and then who knows what might happen? You could just say — that's 200 years, say, if you double every 20 years — we just can't trust these forecasts more than 200 years out. Look at what's happened in the past after that many doublings, big changes happened, and you might say, therefore, expect, on that sort of timescale, something else big to happen. That's not crazy to say. That's not very specific.And then if you say, well, what is the thing people most often speculate could be the cause of a big change? They do say AI, and then we actually have a concrete reason to think AI would change the growth rate of the economy: That is the fact that, at the moment, we make most stuff in factories, and factories typically push out from the factory as much value as the factory itself embodies, in economic terms, in a few months.If you could have factories make factories, the economy could double every few months. The reason we can't now is we have humans in the factories, and factories don't double them. But if you could make AIs in factories, and the AIs made factories, that made more AIs, that could double every few months. So the world economy could plausibly double every few months when AI has dominated the economy.That's of the magnitude doubling every few months versus doubling every 20 years. That's a magnitude similar to the magnitude we saw before from farming to industry, and so that fits together as saying, sometime in the next few centuries, expect a transition that might increase the growth rate of the economy by a factor of 100. Now that's an abstract thing in the long frame, it's not in the next 10 years, or 20 years, or something. It's saying that economic modes only last so long, something should come up eventually, and this is our best guess of a thing that could come up, so it's not crazy.The risks of fertility-rate decline (14:54)Are you a fertility-rate worrier?If the population falls, the best models say innovation rates would fall even faster.I am, and in fact, I think we have a limited deadline to develop human-level AI, before which we won't for a long pause, because falling fertility really threatens innovation rates. This is something we economists understand that I think most other people don't: You might've thought that a falling population could be easily compensated by a growing economy and that we would still have rapid and fast innovation because we would just have a bigger economy with a lower population, but apparently that's not true.If the population falls, the best models say innovation rates would fall even faster. So say the population is roughly predicted to peak in three decades and then start to fall, and if it's falls, it would fall roughly a factor of two every generation or two, depending on which populations dominate, and then if it fell by a factor of 10, the innovation rate would fall by more than a factor of 10, and that means just a slower rate of new technologies, and, of course, also a reduction in the scale of the world economy.And I think that plausibly also has the side effect of a loss in liberality. I don't think people realize how much it was innovation and competition that drove much of the world to become liberal because the winning nations in the world were liberal and the rest were afraid of falling too far behind. But when innovation goes away, they won't be so eager to be liberal to be innovative because innovation just won't be a thing, and so much of the world will just become a lot less liberal.There's also the risk that — basically, computers are a very durable technology, in principle. Typically we don't make them that durable because every two years they get twice as good, but when innovation goes away, they won't get good very fast, and then you'll be much more tempted to just make very durable computers, and the first generation that makes very durable computers that last hundreds of years, the next generation won't want to buy new computers, they'll just use the old durable ones as the economy is shrinking and then the industry that commuters might just go away. And then it could be a long time before people felt a need to rediscover those technologies.I think the larger-scale story is there's no obvious process that would prevent this continued decline because there's no level at which, when you get that, some process kicks in and it makes us say, “Oh, we need to increase the population.” But the most likely scenario is just that the Amish and [Hutterites] and other insular, fertile subgroups who have been doubling every 20 years for a century will just keep doing that and then come to dominate the world, much like Christians took over the Roman Empire: They took it over by doubling every 20 years for three centuries. That's my default future, and then if we don't get AI or colonize space before this decline, which I've estimated would be roughly 70 years' worth more of progress at previous rates, then we don't get it again until the Amish not only just take over the world, but rediscover a taste for technology and economic growth, and then eventually all of the great stuff could happen, but that could be many centuries later.This does not sound like an issue that can be fundamentally altered by tweaking the tax code.You would have to make a large —— Large turn of the dial, really turn that dial.People are uncomfortable with larger-than-small tweaks, of course, but we're not in an era that's at all eager for vast changes in policy, we are in a pretty conservative era that just wants to tweak things. Tweaks won't do it.Window of opportunity for space (18:49)We can't do things like Daylight Savings Time, which some people want to change. You mentioned this window — Elon Musk has talked about a window for expansion into space, and this is a couple of years ago, he said, “The window has closed before. It's open now. Don't assume it will always be open.”Is that right? Why would it close? Is it because of higher interest rates? Because the Amish don't want to go to space? Why would the window close?I think, unfortunately, we've got a limited window to try to jumpstart a space economy before the earth economy shrinks and isn't getting much value from a space economy.There's a demand for space stuff, mostly at the moment, to service Earth, like the internet circling the earth, say, as Elon's big project to fund his spaceships. And there's also demand for satellites to do surveillance of the earth, et cetera. As the earth economy shrinks, the demand for that stuff will shrink. At some point, they won't be able to afford fixed costs.A big question is about marginal cost versus fixed costs. How much is the fixed cost just to have this capacity to send stuff into space, versus the marginal cost of adding each new rocket? If it's dominated by marginal costs and they make the rockets cheaper, okay, they can just do fewer rockets less often, and they can still send satellites up into space. But if you're thinking of something where there's a key scale that you need to get past even to support this industry, then there's a different thing.So thinking about a Mars economy, or even a moon economy, or a solar system economy, you're looking at a scale thing. That thing needs to be big enough to be self-sustaining and economically cost-effective, or it's just not going to work. So I think, unfortunately, we've got a limited window to try to jumpstart a space economy before the earth economy shrinks and isn't getting much value from a space economy. Space economy needs to be big enough just to support itself, et cetera, and that's a problem because it's the same humans in space who are down here on earth, who are going to have the same fertility problems up there unless they somehow figure out a way to make a very different culture.A lot of people just assume, “Oh, you could have a very different culture on Mars, and so they could solve our cultural problems just by being different,” but I'm not seeing that. I think they would just have a very strong interconnection with earth culture because they're going to have just a rapid bandwidth stuff back and forth, and their fertility culture and all sorts of other culture will be tied closely to earth culture, so I'm not seeing how a Mars colony really solves earth cultural problems.Public prediction markets (21:22)The average person is aware that these things, whether it's betting markets or these online consensus prediction markets, that they exist, that you can bet on presidential races, and you can make predictions about a superconductor breakthrough, or something like that, or about when we're going to get AGI.To me, it seems like they have, to some degree, broken through the filter, and people are aware that they're out there. Have they come of age?. . . the big value here isn't going to be betting on elections, it's going to be organizations using them to make organization decisions, and that process is being explored.In this presidential election, there's a lot of discussion that points to them. And people were pretty open to that until Trump started to be favored, and people said, “No, no, that can't be right. There must be a lot of whales out there manipulating, because it couldn't be Trump's winning.” So the openness to these things often depends on what their message is.But honestly, the big value here isn't going to be betting on elections, it's going to be organizations using them to make organization decisions, and that process is being explored. Twenty-five years ago, I invented this concept of decision markets using in organizations, and now in the last year, I've actually seen substantial experimentation with them and so I'm excited to see where that goes, and I'm hopeful there, but that's not so much about the presidential markets.Roughly a century ago there was more money bet in presidential betting markets than in stock markets at the time. Betting markets were very big then, and then they declined, primarily because scientific polling was declared a more scientific approach to estimating elections than betting markets, and all the respectable people wanted to report on scientific polls. And then of course the stock market became much, much bigger. The interest in presidential markets will wax and wane, but there's actually not that much social value in having a better estimate of who's going to win an election. That doesn't really tell you who to vote for, so there are other markets that would be much more socially valuable, like predicting the consequences of who's elected as president. We don't really have much markets on those, but maybe we will next time around. But there is a lot of experimentation going in organizational prediction markets at the moment, compared to, say, 10 years ago, and I'm excited about those experiments.A culture of calculated risk (23:39)I want a culture that, when one of these new nuclear reactors, or these nuclear reactors that are restarting, or these new small modular reactors, when there's some sort of leak, or when a new SpaceX Starship, when some astronaut gets killed, that we just don't collapse as a society. That we're like, well, things happen, we're going to keep moving forward.Do you think we have that kind of culture? And if not, how do we get it, if at all? Is that possible?That's the question: Why has our society become so much more safety-oriented in the last half-century? Certainly one huge sign of it is the way we way overregulated nuclear energy, but we've also now been overregulating even kids going to school. Apparently they can't just take their bikes to school anymore, they have to go on a bus because that's safer, and in a whole bunch of ways, we are just vastly more safety-oriented, and that seems to be a pretty broad cultural trend. It's not just in particular areas and it's not just in particular countries.I've been thinking a lot about long-term cultural trends and trying to understand them. The basic story, I think, is we don't have a good reason to believe long-term cultural trends are actually healthy when they are shared trends of norms and status markers that everybody shares. Cultural things that can vary within the cultures, like different technologies and firm cultures, those we're doing great. We have great evolution of those things, and that's why we're having all these great technologies. But things like safetyism is more of a shared cultural norm, and we just don't have good reasons to think those changes are healthy, and they don't fix themselves, so this is just another example of something that's going wrong.They don't fix themselves because if you have a strong, very widely shared cultural norm, and someone has a different idea, they need to be prepared to pay a price, and most of us aren't prepared to pay that price.If we had a healthy cultural evolution competition among even nations, this would be fine. The problem is we have this global culture, a monoculture, really, that enforces everybody.Right. If, for example, we have 200 countries, if they were actually independent experiments and had just had different cultures going different directions, then I'd feel great; that okay, the cultures that choose too much safety, they'll lose out to the others and eventually it'll be worn out. If we had a healthy cultural evolution competition among even nations, this would be fine. The problem is we have this global culture, a monoculture, really, that enforces everybody.At the beginning of Covid, all the usual public health efforts said all the usual things, and then world elites got together and talked about it, and a month later they said, “No, that's all wrong. We have a whole different thing to do. Travel restrictions are good, masks are good, distancing is good.” And then the entire world did it the same way, and there was strong pressure on any deviation, even Sweden, that would dare to deviate from the global consensus.If you look about many kinds of regulation, it's very little deviation worldwide. We don't have 200, or even 100, independent policy experiments, we basically have a main global civilization that does it the same, and maybe one or two deviants that are allowed to have somewhat different behavior, but pay a price for it.On sale everywhere The Conservative Futurist: How To Create the Sci-Fi World We Were PromisedFaster, Please! is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Micro Reads▶ Economics* The Next President Inherits a Remarkable Economy - WSJ* The surprising barrier that keeps us from building the housing we need - MIT* Trump's tariffs, explained - Wapo* Watts and Bots: The Energy Implications of AI Adoption - SSRN* The Changing Nature of Technology Shocks - SSRN* AI Regulation and Entrepreneurship - SSRN▶ Business* Microsoft reports big profits amid massive AI investments - Ars* Meta's Next Llama AI Models Are Training on a GPU Cluster ‘Bigger Than Anything' Else - Wired* Apple's AI and Vision Pro Products Don't Meet Its Standards - Bberg Opinion* Uber revenues surge amid robust US consumer spending - FT* Elon Musk in funding talks with Middle East investors to value xAI at $45bn - FT▶ Policy/Politics* Researchers ‘in a state of panic' after Robert F. 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A Behavioral Evaluation of LLM-Agents in Dictator Games - Arxiv▶ Biotech/Health* Obesity Drug Shows Promise in Easing Knee Osteoarthritis Pain - NYT* Peak Beef Could Already Be Here - Bberg Opinion▶ Clean Energy/Climate* Chinese EVs leave other carmakers with only bad options - FT Opinion* Inside a fusion energy facility - MIT* Why aren't we driving hydrogen powered cars yet? There's a reason EVs won. - Popular Science* America Can't Do Without Fracking - WSJ Opinion▶ Robotics/AVs* American Drone Startup Notches Rare Victory in Ukraine - WSJ* How Wayve's driverless cars will meet one of their biggest challenges yet - MIT▶ Space/Transportation* Mars could have lived, even without a magnetic field - Big Think▶ Up Wing/Down Wing* The new face of European illiberalism - FT* How to recover when a climate disaster destroys your city - Nature▶ Substacks/Newsletters* Thinking about "temporary hardship" - Noahpinion* Hold My Beer, California - Hyperdimensional* Robert Moses's ideas were weird and bad - Slow Boring* Trading Places? No Thanks. - The Dispatch* The Case For Small Reactors - Breakthrough Journal* The Fourth Industrial Revolution and the Future of Work - Conversable EconomistFaster, Please! is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. 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Minds Almost Meeting: Season 9, Episode 13. View the transcript for this episode here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mindsa⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠lmostmeeting.com/episodes/modernism Imagine two smart curious friendly and basically truth-seeking people, but from very different intellectual traditions. Traditions with different tools, priorities, and ground rules. What would they discuss? Would they talk past each other? Make any progress? Would anyone want to hear them? Economist Robin Hanson and philosopher Agnes Callard decided to find out. Visit the Minds Almost Meeting website here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mindsalmostmeeting.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Freddie deBoer has a post on what he calls “the temporal Copernican principle.” He argues we shouldn't expect a singularity, apocalypse, or any other crazy event in our lifetimes. Discussing celebrity transhumanist Yuval Harari, he writes: What I want to say to people like Yuval Harari is this. The modern human species is about 250,000 years old, give or take 50,000 years depending on who you ask. Let's hope that it keeps going for awhile - we'll be conservative and say 50,000 more years of human life. So let's just throw out 300,000 years as the span of human existence, even though it could easily be 500,000 or a million or more. Harari's lifespan, if he's lucky, will probably top out at about 100 years. So: what are the odds that Harari's lifespan overlaps with the most important period in human history, as he believes, given those numbers? That it overlaps with a particularly important period of human history at all? Even if we take the conservative estimate for the length of human existence of 300,000 years, that means Harari's likely lifespan is only about .33% of the entirety of human existence. Isn't assuming that this .33% is somehow particularly special a very bad assumption, just from the basis of probability? And shouldn't we be even more skeptical given that our basic psychology gives us every reason to overestimate the importance of our own time? (I think there might be a math error here - 100 years out of 300,000 is 0.033%, not 0.33% - but this isn't my main objection.) He then condemns a wide range of people, including me, for failing to understand this: Some people who routinely violate the Temporal Copernican Principle include Harari, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Sam Altman, Francis Fukuyama, Elon Musk, Clay Shirky, Tyler Cowen, Matt Yglesias, Tom Friedman, Scott Alexander, every tech company CEO, Ray Kurzweil, Robin Hanson, and many many more. I think they should ask themselves how much of their understanding of the future ultimately stems from a deep-seated need to believe that their times are important because they think they themselves are important, or want to be. I deny misunderstanding this. Freddie is wrong. https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/contra-deboer-on-temporal-copernicanism 

In this episode of Upstream, Erik Torenberg is joined by economist and futurist Robin Hanson.  They dissect the intricacies of human motives, the psychology of status, and the profound impact of self-deception on behavior. Robin shares his revolutionary ideas for reforming academia and his pioneering work on prediction markets and his thoughts on the future of innovation amidst falling fertility rates. —

Proph3t is the anonymous Founder of MetaDAO. In this episode, we discuss one of our favorite trending projects in crypto, MetaDAO, and why the world needs decision-making markets. Inspired by American economist Robert Hanson who proposed the idea back in 2000 to "vote on values, but bet on beliefs," MetaDAO is the first project to put this into practice, where anyone can create, manage, and participate in futarchies. ------

Minds Almost Meeting: Season 9, Episode 12. View the transcript for this episode here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mindsa⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠lmostmeeting.com/episodes/fear-of-persuasion Imagine two smart curious friendly and basically truth-seeking people, but from very different intellectual traditions. Traditions with different tools, priorities, and ground rules. What would they discuss? Would they talk past each other? Make any progress? Would anyone want to hear them? Economist Robin Hanson and philosopher Agnes Callard decided to find out. Visit the Minds Almost Meeting website here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mindsalmostmeeting.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Minds Almost Meeting: Season 9, Episode 11. View the transcript for this episode here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mindsa⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠lmostmeeting.com/episodes/cancel-culture Imagine two smart curious friendly and basically truth-seeking people, but from very different intellectual traditions. Traditions with different tools, priorities, and ground rules. What would they discuss? Would they talk past each other? Make any progress? Would anyone want to hear them? Economist Robin Hanson and philosopher Agnes Callard decided to find out. Visit the Minds Almost Meeting website here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mindsalmostmeeting.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: In defense of technological unemployment as the main AI concern, published by tailcalled on August 28, 2024 on LessWrong. It seems to me that when normal people are concerned about AI destroying their life, they are mostly worried about technological unemployment, whereas rationalists think that it is a bigger risk that the AI might murder us all, and that automation gives humans more wealth and free time and is therefore good. I'm not entirely unsympathetic to the rationalist position here. If we had a plan for how to use AI to create a utopia where humanity could thrive, I'd be all for it. We have problems (like death) that we are quite far from solving, and which it seems like a superintelligence could in principle quickly solve. But this requires value alignment: we need to be quite careful what we mean by concepts like "humanity", "thrive", etc., so the AI can explicitly maintain good conditions. What kinds of humans do we want, and what kinds of thriving should they have? This needs to be explicitly planned by any agent which solves this task. Our current society doesn't say "humans should thrive", it says "professional humans should thrive"; certain alternative types of humans like thieves are explicitly suppressed, and other types of humans like beggars are not exactly encouraged. This is of course not an accident: professionals produce value, which is what allows society to exist in the first place. But with technological unemployment, we decouple professional humans from value production, undermining the current society's priority of human welfare. This loss is what causes existential risk. If humanity was indefinitely competitive in most tasks, the AIs would want to trade with us or enslave us instead of murdering us or letting us starve to death. Even if we manage to figure out how to value-align AIs, this loss leads to major questions about what to value-align the AIs to, since e.g. if we value human capabilities, the fact that those capabilities become uncompetitive likely means that they will diminish to the point of being vestigial. It's unclear how to solve this problem. Eliezer's original suggestion was to keep humans more capable than AIs by increasing the capabilities of humans. Yet even increasing the capabilities of humanity is difficult, let alone keeping up with technological development. Robin Hanson suggests that humanity should just sit back and live off our wealth as we got replaced. I guess that's the path we're currently on, but it is really dubious to me whether we'll be able to keep that wealth, and whether the society that replaces us will have any moral worth. Either way, these questions are nearly impossible to separate from the question of, what kinds of production will be performed in the future? Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org

Jim talks with Malcolm and Simone Collins about declining worldwide fertility rates and pronatalism. They discuss when fertility started declining, the pre-World-War-I fertility catastrophe, the countries entering fertility freefall, a population-based pyramid scheme, different cultural frameworks' resistances to fertility collapse, the urban monoculture, the rise of an anti-natalist mindset, preparing for a consistent economic decline, the UN's misleading statistic, the debt overhang, whether the downsides are overstated, why this is not a wealthy person problem, guillotines, how the urban monoculture affects the gene pool, equality vs removal of in-the-moment pain, oversensitivity to negative stimuli, causes of the current fertility collapse, declining sperm rates, endocrine disruptors, decrease in sex drive among gen alpha, forgetting of ancestral traditions, tradwives, raising kids as if they were retired billionaires, sumptuary laws as solutions to multipolar traps, fixing cultural norms over fixing real estate prices, valorizing austerity, the correlation between fertility crashes & embracing the Enlightenment, responses to the temptation of infinite pleasure whenever you want it, building pro-natalism as a cohesive movement, the religion of Techno-Puritanism, the Future Police Holiday, becoming gods through intergenerational martyrdom, taking the anti-mystic route, a positive correlation between consequentialism & fertility rates, cultivars, mystery cults vs theological evolution, and much more. Episode Transcript The Pragmatist's Guides to Life Based Camp (Podcast) JRS EP 213 - Robin Hanson on Declining Fertility Rates Pronatalist.org The Infant Development and Environment Study (TIDES) "Reclaiming Our Cognitive Sovereignty," by Jim Rutt Your Money or Your Life, by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin JRS EP 143 - John Vervaeke Part 1: Awakening from the Meaning Crisis The Rise of Christianity, by Rodney Stark Malcolm and Simone Collins are international pronatalist advocates and authors. They are co-writers of The Pragmatist's Guides to Life, a series on relationships, sexuality, governance, and crafting religion. They also co-host a podcast, Based Camp. Their core area of focus is on cultural evolution and predicting the future. Publicly they are generally known as "the elite couple breeding to save mankind."

Minds Almost Meeting: Season 9, Episode 10. View the transcript for this episode here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mindsa⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠lmostmeeting.com/episodes/romantic-validation Imagine two smart curious friendly and basically truth-seeking people, but from very different intellectual traditions. Traditions with different tools, priorities, and ground rules. What would they discuss? Would they talk past each other? Make any progress? Would anyone want to hear them? Economist Robin Hanson and philosopher Agnes Callard decided to find out. Visit the Minds Almost Meeting website here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mindsalmostmeeting.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Minds Almost Meeting: Season 9, Episode 9. View the transcript for this episode here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mindsa⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠lmostmeeting.com/episodes/cryonics Imagine two smart curious friendly and basically truth-seeking people, but from very different intellectual traditions. Traditions with different tools, priorities, and ground rules. What would they discuss? Would they talk past each other? Make any progress? Would anyone want to hear them? Economist Robin Hanson and philosopher Agnes Callard decided to find out. Visit the Minds Almost Meeting website here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mindsalmostmeeting.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Minds Almost Meeting: Season 9, Episode 8. View the transcript for this episode here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mindsa⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠lmostmeeting.com/episodes/taylor-swift Imagine two smart curious friendly and basically truth-seeking people, but from very different intellectual traditions. Traditions with different tools, priorities, and ground rules. What would they discuss? Would they talk past each other? Make any progress? Would anyone want to hear them? Economist Robin Hanson and philosopher Agnes Callard decided to find out. Visit the Minds Almost Meeting website here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mindsalmostmeeting.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Minds Almost Meeting: Season 9, Episode 7. View the transcript for this episode here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mindsa⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠lmostmeeting.com/episodes/love-triangles Imagine two smart curious friendly and basically truth-seeking people, but from very different intellectual traditions. Traditions with different tools, priorities, and ground rules. What would they discuss? Would they talk past each other? Make any progress? Would anyone want to hear them? Economist Robin Hanson and philosopher Agnes Callard decided to find out. Visit the Minds Almost Meeting website here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mindsalmostmeeting.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Minds Almost Meeting: Season 9, Episode 6. View the transcript for this episode here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mindsa⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠lmostmeeting.com/episodes/color Imagine two smart curious friendly and basically truth-seeking people, but from very different intellectual traditions. Traditions with different tools, priorities, and ground rules. What would they discuss? Would they talk past each other? Make any progress? Would anyone want to hear them? Economist Robin Hanson and philosopher Agnes Callard decided to find out. Visit the Minds Almost Meeting website here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mindsalmostmeeting.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Why might our brains be keeping us in the dark about our own motives? What's the reason humans give to charity? How do cultural norms lead to continual efforts to signal to our potential allies?Robin Hanson is a professor of economics at George Mason University . His latest two books are titled, The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life, and The Age of Em: Work, Love, and Life when Robots Rule the Earth.Robin and Greg discuss the discrepancies between what we say and our true intentions.Robin shares how human interaction within our discussions is less about the content and more about social positioning and signaling. Robin talks about the intricate dance of conversations, where showing status, expressing care, and signaling allyship are at the forefront. They also wrestle with the concept of luxury goods and their role in consumer behavior, challenging the conventional wisdom about why we buy what we buy and the messages we're really sending with our choices.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:On conscious mind and social norm23:39: Humans have rules about what you're supposed to do and not supposed to do, especially regarding each other. And we really care a lot about our associates not violating those norms, and we're very eager to find rivals violating them and call them out on that. And that's just a really big thing in our lives. And in fact, it's so big that plausibly your conscious mind, the part of your mind I'm talking to, isn't the entire mind, you have noticed. You've got lots of stuff going on in your head that you're not very conscious of, but your conscious mind is the part of you whose job it is mainly to watch what you're doing and at all moments have a story about why you're doing it and why this thing you're doing, for the reason you're doing it,isn't something violating norms. If you didn't have this conscious mind all the time putting together the story, you'd be much more vulnerable to other people claiming that you're violating norms and accusing you of being a bad person for doing bad things.Our individual doesn't care much about norms20:25: Sometimes norms are functional and helpful, and sometimes they're not. Our individual incentive doesn't care much about that. Our incentive is to not violate the norms and not be caught violating the norms, regardless of whether they're good or bad norms, regardless of what function they serve.Why do people not want to subsidize luxury items, but they do subsidize education?46:34: So part of the problem is that we often idealize some things and even make them sacred. And then, in their role as something sacred, we are willing to subsidize them and sacrifice for them. And then it's less about maybe their consequences and more about showing our devotion to the sacred. In some sense, sacred things are the things we are most eager to show our devotion to. And that's why people who want to promote things want us to see them as sacred. So, schools have succeeded in getting many people to see schools as a sacred venture and therefore worthy of extra subsidy. And they're less interested in maybe the calculation of the job consequences of education because they just see education itself as sacred.On notion of cultural drift47:55: So human superpower is cultural evolution. This is why we can do things so much better than other animals. The key mechanism of culture is that we copy the behaviors of others. In order to make that work, we have to differentially copy the behavior that's better, not the behavior that's worse. And to do that, we need a way to judge who is more successful so that we will copy the successful. So our estimate of what counts as success—who are the people around us who we will count as successful and worthy of emulation—is a key element of culture. And that's going to drive a lot of our choices, including our values and norms. We're going to have compatible and matching with our concept of who around us is the most admirable, the most worthy of celebration and emulation.Show Links:Recommended Resources:François de La RochefoucauldMicrosociologyPatek Philippe WatchesConsumptionParochialismThe Case against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and MoneyEvolutionGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at George Mason UniversityBlog - Overcoming BiasPodcast - Minds Almost MeetingProfile on LinkedInSocial Profile on XHis Work:Amazon Author PageThe Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday LifeThe Age of Em: Work, Love, and Life when Robots Rule the Earth

Robin Hanson replied here to my original post challenging him on health care here. On Straw-Manning Robin thinks I'm straw-manning him. He says: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/response-to-hanson-on-health-care

Robin Hanson of Overcoming Bias more or less believes medicine doesn't work [EDIT: see his response here, where he says this is an inaccurate summary of his position. Further chain of responses here and here] This is a strong claim. It would be easy to round Hanson's position off to something weaker, like “extra health care isn't valuable on the margin”. This is how most people interpret the studies he cites. Still, I think his current, actual position is that medicine doesn't work. For example, he writes: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/contra-hanson-on-medical-effectiveness 

Jim talks with Robin Hanson about the ideas in his essay "Beware Cultural Drift: Thoughts on modernity's monoculture mistake." They discuss drift in fundamental cultural values, the current unprecedented rate of change, boutique multiculturalism, weak selection pressures, drift without selection, understanding small cultures, agency risk, comparing corporate cultures with macro-cultures, the decrease in macro-cultures, the convergence of global elite culture, worldwide norms vs cultural sphere norms, fertility habits & falling fertility, fertility decline as a symptom, 2 kinds of stories cultural elites tell, context-dependent vs learning-based drivers, the connection between deeper goals & subgoals, turning the ship vs getting on lifeboats, joining the opposition, differential reproduction & the fall of Rome, conservatism, totalitarianism, deep multiculturalism, coherent pluralism, getting to the stars, artificial minds, why Robin is pro-cult, pressure to collapse into red-blue tribalism, rates of innovation, and much more. Episode Transcript "Beware Cultural Drift," by Robin Hanson JRS EP2 - Robin Hanson – Decision Making and “The Age of Em” JRS Extra: On COVID-19 Strategies with Robin Hanson JRS Currents 011: Robin Hanson on RightTalkism JRS EP 213 - Robin Hanson on Declining Fertility Rates Anarchy, State, and Utopia, by Robert Nozick Robin Hanson is an Associate Professor of Economics, and received his Ph.D in 1997 in social sciences from Caltech. He joined George Mason's economics faculty in 1999 after completing a two-year post-doc at U.C Berkely. His major fields of interest include health policy, regulation, and formal political theory.

Robin's history of thinking about the future ... Seeing AI as offspring, not adversary ... Robin's famous answer to a great cosmic mystery ... Would evidence of aliens be good news or bad? ... Is rationalist culture cultist? ... LLMs: revolution or hype cycle? ... Heading to Overtime ...

Robin's history of thinking about the future ... Seeing AI as offspring, not adversary ... Robin's famous answer to a great cosmic mystery ... Would evidence of aliens be good news or bad? ... Is rationalist culture cultist? ... LLMs: revolution or hype cycle? ... Heading to Overtime ...