The Jim Rutt Show: Recent Episodes
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Crisp conversations with critical thinkers at the leading edge of science, technology, politics, and social systems.
In this flipped episode, Brendan Graham Dempsey interviews Jim about the ideas in his recent Substack essays "A Minimum Viable Metaphysics" and "What I Mean by 'Metaphysics'." They discuss metaphysics as assumptions for learning and reasoning, the difference between deduction, induction, & abduction, Jim's belief that there are no paradoxes in the real world, the reality principle, the asymmetry principle, the lawfulness principle, the potential stochastic nature of reality, why determinism and lawfulness aren't the same, consciousness in the tree of emergence, why emergence is important, causal time, downward causality as the main claim of emergence, temporal reciprocal emergence, Jim's reputation for drawing a firearm when the word metaphysics is used, the weak & strong anthropic principles, and much more. Episode Transcript "A Minimum Viable Metaphysics," by Jim Rutt "What I Mean by 'Metaphysics'," by Jim Rutt JRS EP 322 - Brendan Graham Dempsey on Psyche and Symbolic Learning Institute of Applied Metatheory The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World, by David Deutsch JRS Currents 100: Sara Walker and Lee Cronin on Time as an ObjectBrendan Graham Dempsey is Director of Research at the Institute of Applied Metatheory, where he studies the complexification of worldviews and human meaning-making systems across scales. He holds an advanced degree from Yale University, where he studied religion and culture. His books include Emergentism: A Religion of Complexity for the Metamodern World and the multi-volume Evolution of Meaning series. He is Managing Editor of Integration: The Journal of Big Picture Theory and Practice and a founding editor of Metamodern Theory & Praxis.
Jim talks with Nate Soares about the ideas in his and Eliezer Yudkowsky's book If Anybody Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All. They discuss the book's claim that mitigating existential AI risk should be a top global priority, the idea that LLMs are grown, the opacity of deep learning networks, the Golden Gate activation vector, whether our understanding of deep learning networks might improve enough to prevent catastrophe, goodness as a narrow target, the alignment problem, the problem of pointing minds, whether LLMs are just stochastic parrots, why predicting a corpus often requires more mental machinery than creating a corpus, depth & generalization of skills, wanting as an effective strategy, goal orientation, limitations of training goal pursuit, transient limitations of current AI, protein folding and AlphaFold, the riskiness of automating alignment research, the correlation between capability and more coherent drives, why the authors anchored their argument on transformers & LLMs, the inversion of Moravec's paradox, the geopolitical multipolar trap, making world leaders aware of the issues, a treaty to ban the race to superintelligence, the specific terms of the proposed treaty, a comparison with banning uranium enrichment, why Jim tentatively thinks this proposal is a mistake, a priesthood of the power supply, whether attention is a zero-sum game, and much more. Episode Transcript If Anybody Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All, by Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares "Psyop or Insanity or ...? Peter Thiel, the Antichrist, and Our Collapsing Epistemic Commons," by Jim Rutt "On Targeted Manipulation and Deception when Optimizing LLMs for User Feedback," by Marcus Williams et al. Attention Sinks and Compression Valleys in LLMs are Two Sides of the Same Coin," by Enrique Queipo-de-Llano et al. JRS EP 217 - Ben Goertzel on a New Framework for AGI "A Tentative Draft of a Treaty, With Annotations"Nate Soares is the President of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute. He has been working in the field for over a decade, after previous experience at Microsoft and Google. Soares is the author of a large body of technical and semi-technical writing on AI alignment, including foundational work on value learning, decision theory, and power-seeking incentives in smarter-than-human AIs.
Jim talks with Alex Ebert about the ideas in his Substack essay "New Age and the Religion of Self: The Anatomy of a Rebellion Against Reality." They discuss the meanings of New Age and religion, the New Thought movement, the law of attraction, manifesting, Trump's artifacts of manifestation, the unmooring from concrete artifacts, individual and collective hallucinations, intersubjective verification of the interobjective, the subjective-first perspective, epistemic asymmetry as the cool, New Ageism's constant reference to quantum physics, manifesting as a way to negate social responsibility, the odd coincidence of leaving the gold standard and New Ageism, spiritual bypassing, a global derealization, new retribalized collective delusions, the Faustian bargain of AI, rationality as a virus, the noble lie, indeterminacy as a sign of emergence, nostalgia as a sales pitch, regaining the sense of hypocrisy, localized retribalizations, GameB as a series of membranes, and much more. Episode Transcript "New Age and the Religion of Self: The Anatomy of a Rebellion Against Reality," by Alex Ebert Bad Guru (Alex's Substack) Jim Rutt's Substack "Unclear Thinking About Philosophical Zombies and Quantum Measurement," by Jim Rutt The Century of the Self (documentary by Adam Curtis)Alex Ebert is a platinum-selling musician (Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros), Golden Globe-winning film composer, cultural critic and philosopher living in New Orleans. His philosophical project, FreQ Theory, as well as his cultural analyses, can be followed on his Substack.
Jim talks with Joe Edelman about the ideas in the Meaning Alignment Institute's recent paper "Full Stack Alignment: Co-Aligning AI and Institutions with Thick Models of Value." They discuss pluralism as a core principle in designing social systems, the informational basis for alignment, how preferential models fail to capture what people truly care about, the limitations of markets and voting as preference-based systems, critiques of text-based approaches in LLMs, thick models of value, values as attentional policies, AI assistants as potential vectors for manipulation, the need for reputation systems and factual grounding, the "super negotiator" project for better contract negotiation, multipolar traps, moral graph elicitation, starting with membranes, Moloch-free zones, unintended consequences and lessons from early Internet optimism, concentration of power as a key danger, co-optation risks, and much more. Episode Transcript "A Minimum Viable Metaphysics," by Jim Rutt (Substack) Jim's Substack JRS Currents 080: Joe Edelman and Ellie Hain on Rebuilding Meaning Meaning Alignment Institute If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All, by Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares "Full Stack Alignment: Co-aligning AI and Institutions with Thick Models of Value," by Joe Edelman et al. "What Are Human Values and How Do We Align AI to Them?" by Oliver Klingefjord, Ryan Lowe, and Joe EdelmanJoe Edelman has spent much of his life trying to understand how ML systems and markets could change, retaining their many benefits but avoiding their characteristic problems: of atomization, and of servicing shallow desires over deeper needs. Along the way this led him to formulate theories of human meaning and values (https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.10636) and study models of societal transformation (https://www.full-stack-alignment.ai/paper) as well as inventing the meaning-based metrics used at CouchSurfing, Facebook, and Apple, co-founding the Center for Humane Technology and the Meaning Alignment Institute, and inventing new democratic systems (https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.10636). He’s currently one of the PIs leading the Full-Stack Alignment program at the Meaning Alignment Institute, with a network of more than 50 researchers at universities and corporate labs working on these issues.
Jim talks with John Preston about his book 40 Flushes to Grow Your Business: The World's #2 Business Series, which is designed to be read during bathroom breaks. They discuss breaking free from being a one-person show, hiring self-guided employees, the importance of business owner support networks, clarity on business goals & personal objectives, the five-gear growth machine business metrics model, marketing fundamentals & investment levels, understanding the customer journey, social media pitfalls, customer inquiry response strategies, complaint management, CEO time management & delegation, working capital needs, lifestyle creep, measuring business metrics, gross profit vs net profit, building high-trust company cultures, transparency with employees, marketing strategies & customer acquisition, hiring & retention strategies, and much more. Episode Transcript 40 Flushes to Grow Your Business: The World's #2 Business Series, by John Preston Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action, by Simon Sinek The JP Business AcademyJohn Preston is a Hall of Fame sales and business coach who transforms complex concepts into actionable insights for entrepreneurs and sales teams, drawing from his 22+ years as a television news reporter and producer. As the creator of JP Business Academy, he specializes in making business education accessible through live, engaging training sessions and online teaching. He can be reached by email at john@thejpbusinessacademy.
Jim talks with Pablos Holman about the ideas in his new book Deep Future: Creating Technology That Matters. They discuss deep tech versus shallow tech, computational modeling and simulation for real-world problems, the hacker mindset, the role of inventors, nuclear power and renewable energy solutions, population growth, development challenges, space-based solar power, the likelihood of fusion power, mistakes in German energy policy, energy storage limitations, the transformation of the apparel industry through automation, and much more. Episode Transcript Deep Future: Creating Technology That Matters, by Pablos Holman Deep Future (company) Intellectual Ventures LabPablos is a hacker, inventor, and bestselling author of Deep Future: Creating Technology that Matters, the indispensable guide to deep tech. Now Managing Partner at Deep Future, investing in technologies to solve the world’s biggest problems. Previously, Pablos worked on spaceships at Blue Origin and helped build The Intellectual Ventures Lab to invent a wide variety of breakthroughs including a brain surgery tool, a machine to suppress hurricanes, 3D food printers, and a laser that can shoot down mosquitos—part of an impact invention effort to eradicate malaria with Bill Gates. Pablos hosts the Deep Future Podcast and is a top public speaker—his talks have over 30 million views.
Jim talks with Brendan Graham Dempsey about the ideas in his book Psyche and Symbolic Learning, volume 2 in his Evolution of Meaning series. We discussed hierarchical complexity, stage theories of development, constructivism & realism, dynamic skill theory, the Lectical Scale, ego development & consciousness, meaning systems & worldviews, cross-cultural developmental patterns, statistical distributions of developmental stages, the relationship between semantic richness & structural complexity, justification systems theory & cultural evolution, and much more. Episode Transcript A Universal Learning Process, by Brendan Graham Dempsey (Volume 1) Emergentism, by Brendan Graham Dempsey In Over Our Heads, by Robert Kegan "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?", by Thomas Nagel EP 172 Brendan Graham Dempsey on Emergentism EP 293 Brendan Graham Dempsey on Cosmic Teleology and Emergence VectorsBrendan Graham Dempsey is a writer, researcher, organic farmer, and the director of Sky Meadow Institute, an organization dedicated to “promoting systems-based thinking about the things that matter most.” He graduated summa cum laude with a BA in religious studies and classical civilizations from the University of Vermont and earned his master’s from Yale University, where he studied religion and culture. He is the author of Metamodernism: Or, The Cultural Logic of Cultural Logics and host of the Metamodern Spirituality Podcast. His primary interests include theorizing developments in culture after postmodernism, productively bridging the divide between science and spirituality, and developing sustainable systems for life to flourish. All of these lead through the paradigms of emergence and complexity, which inform all of his work.
Jim talks with James Fadiman and Jordan Gruber about the findings in their recent book Microdosing for Health, Healing, and Enhanced Performance. They discuss the definition of microdosing, "subthreshold" vs "subperceptual," typical doses, current usage statistics & demographics, its legal status & classification history, LSD, psilocybin, why cannabis isn't suitable for microdosing, mechanisms of action, dosing protocols, anti-inflammatory effects, health applications, enhancement applications, contraindications & side effects, research methodologies & limitations, commercial potential, global adoption patterns, and much more. Episode Transcript Microdosing for Health, Healing, and Enhanced Performance, by James Fadiman and Jordan Gruber The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide, by James Fadiman Our Symphony of Selves, by James Fadiman and Jordan Gruber JRS EP126 - Jordan Gruber & James Fadiman on Our Symphony of Selves Autism on Acid, by Aaron Paul Orsini Institute of Noetic SciencesJames Fadiman, Ph.D., is a prominent figure in the field of psychedelic research, particularly known for his work on microdosing psychedelics like LSD and psilocybin. Often called the “father of microdosing,” Fadiman has a long history in the study of psychedelics dating back to the 1960s, when he worked on studies involving LSD and creativity while at Stanford University. After psychedelics were banned in the U.S., Fadiman shifted his focus but returned to psychedelic research decades later. His book, The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide: Safe, Therapeutic, and Sacred Journeys, has become a key resource for safe psychedelic exploration. In recent years, he has pioneered research on microdosing, examining its potential benefits for mental health, cognitive enhancement, and overall well-being.Jordan Gruber, JD, MA, founded the early online Enlightenment.Com community. After practicing law at Cooley Godward and focusing on IP law at NASA’s Moffett Field, as well as working at GNOSIS Magazine, Jordan became “the Practical Wordsmith,” a writer, ghostwriter, editor, and writing coach speciliazing in transformational modalities and practices. Jordan has helped create cutting-edge works on everything from forensic audio and financial services to health, wellness, psychology, and spirituality. Recent editing credits include Cindy Lou Golin’s The Shadow Playbook (2023), Scott Rogers’s The Mindful Law Student (2022), and Lawrence Ford’s The Secrets of the Seasons (2020).
Jim talks with David Shapiro about how to use AI language models as research and writing tools. They discuss post-labor economics, the evolution of AI tools from GPT-2 through GPT-4, using AI as a learning companion vs. relying on it completely, David's AI tool stack, exploring new domains, using NotebookLM for document management & searching, AI writing and editing techniques, critique and perspectives through personas, the rapid adoption of AI tools across industries, understanding limitations, challenges for AI startups, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS EP 317 - David Shapiro on Post-Labor EconomicsDavid Shapiro is an American AI thought leader, author, YouTuber, and former IT infrastructure and automation engineer based in Raleigh, North Carolina. With over 16 years of experience in technology, including four years focused on artificial intelligence, Shapiro has emerged as a prominent voice in AI philosophy, cognitive architectures, and post-labor economics. His work centers on the societal and economic implications of AI, advocating for a future of post-scarcity and hyper-abundance where automation meets basic human needs at low cost.
Jim talks with Lawrence Cahoone about his book The Orders of Nature and his systematic approach to naturalist philosophy. They discuss fallibilist & local metaphysics, objective relativism, the rejection of simples, Jim's materialism which grants emergence first-class existence, Wimsatt's notion of emergence & nonaggregativity, downward causation & pruning rules, natural complexes, Aristotle's four causes & the use of purpose in biology, the distinction between teleonomy & teleology, the five orders of nature (physical, material, biological, psychological & cultural), characteristic time scales in emergence theory, why particular disciplines coevolved in intellectual traditions, Erik Hoel's theory about emergence having the highest causal power, natural religion & the fine-tuned constants of the universe, the choice between multiverse explanations & a single ground of nature, Darwin's views on divine purpose, comparisons to deists like Spinoza & Einstein, and much more. Episode Transcript The Orders of Nature, by Lawrence Cahoone The Emergence of Value: Human Norms in a Natural World, by Lawrence Cahoone The Feynman Lectures on Physics, by Richard FeynmanLawrence Cahoone graduated with a Ph.D. in Philosophy at Stony Brook University in 1985. Cahoone's areas of specialization are American Philosophy, Continental Philosophy, Social and Political Philosophy, Philosophy of Culture, Metaphysics and Natural Science and Modernism and Postmodernism. Since 2000, Cahoone has taught at Holy Cross and is now currently an Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Holy Cross. He has also written and published seven books in his career, including The Emergence of Value, The Orders of Nature, and Cultural Revolutions.
Jim talks with Adam B. Levine about humanity's rapidly changing relationship with AI and "thinking on demand." They discuss the GPT-5 release & pricing, open-source AI models, the three-dimensional framework of AI advancement (models & hardware & agent frameworks), the evolution of vibe coding, development tools, agent-based development, AI implementation strategies with humans in the loop, the Midnight Protocol project, Vendor Relationship Management versus CRM, automated negotiation systems, the trillion-dollar opportunity in improving the infosphere, enshittification risks, local AI processing on personal devices, the future of AI agents as personal representatives, and much more. Episode Transcript Speaking of Bitcoin! Podcast JRS EP 313 - Chris Colin on Why Customer Service Sucks JRS EP 316 - Ken Stanley on the AI Representation Problem The Intention Economy, by Doc Searls Midnight ProtocolAdam B. Levine has spent over a decade pioneering disruptive technologies before they become mainstream. He launched one of the earliest Bitcoin podcasts, Let’s Talk Bitcoin! (2013), founded Tokenly (2014)—one of the earliest companies exploring what could be done with blockchain tokens—and served as CoinDesk’s first podcast editor (2019), hosting shows like Speaking of Bitcoin and Markets Daily. In 2021, he founded 330.ai, a startup building cutting-edge tools to boost creativity with AI.
Jim talks with David Shapiro about his six-part series on "post-labor economics." They discuss historical economic transitions, the logic of labor substitution, automation & AI's impacts on employment, the four basic human economic offerings (strength, dexterity, cognition & empathy), labor as a societal pillar, the pyramid of prosperity (universal basic services, collectively owned public & private assets, conventional private assets, & residual wages), the pyramid of power (immutable civic bedrock, freedom to transact, radical transparency, direct programmable democracy, & forkable constitutional meta-governance), blockchain & cryptocurrency, radical financial transparency, liquid democracy, governance innovation, and much more. Episode Transcript "Post-Labor Economics pt. 1: The Rise of Automation," by David Shapiro on Substack "You should let the human race die out," by David Shapiro on Substack Why Nations Fail, by Daron Acemoğlu and James Robinson The Bitcoin Standard, by Saifedean Ammous "An Introduction to Liquid Democracy," by Jim RuttDavid Shapiro is an American AI thought leader, author, YouTuber, and former IT infrastructure and automation engineer based in Raleigh, North Carolina. With over 16 years of experience in technology, including four years focused on artificial intelligence, Shapiro has emerged as a prominent voice in AI philosophy, cognitive architectures, and post-labor economics. His work centers on the societal and economic implications of AI, advocating for a future of post-scarcity and hyper-abundance where automation meets basic human needs at low cost.
Jim talks with Ken Stanley about the Fractured Entanglement Representation hypothesis in deep learning neural networks. They discuss open-endedness in AI systems & evolution, the Picbreeder experiment & its significance, the objective paradox of finding things by not looking for them, comparisons between Picbreeder & SGD networks, visual differences in internal representations, weight sweep experiments, modular vs tangled decomposition, implications for creativity & continual learning & generalization abilities, Unified Factored Representation as an alternative to FER, the relationship to grokking in neural networks, scaling considerations & evidence in larger models, potential methods to achieve UFR, connections to biological evolution and DNA representation, and much more. Episode Transcript Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective, by Kenneth Stanley and Joel Lehman "Questioning Representational Optimism in Deep Learning: The Fractured Entanglement Representation Hypothesis" by Akarsh Kumar, Jeff Clune, Joel Lehman, and Kenneth Stanley JRS EP137 - Ken Stanley on Neuroevolution JRS EP130 - Ken Stanley on Why Greatness Cannot Be PlannedKenneth O. Stanley is the Senior Vice President of Open-Endedness at Lila Sciences. He previously led a research team at OpenAI also on the challenge of open-endedness. Before that, he was Charles Millican Professor of Computer Science at the University of Central Florida and was also a co-founder of Geometric Intelligence Inc., which was acquired by Uber to create Uber AI Labs, where he was head of Core AI research. He is an inventor of popular algorithms including NEAT, novelty search, and CPPNs. He has won more than 10 best paper awards and his original 2002 paper on NEAT also received the 2017 ISAL Award for Outstanding Paper of the Decade 2002 - 2012 from the International Society for Artificial Life. He is also a coauthor of the popular science book, Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective (published originally in the US by Springer), and has spoken widely on its subject.
Jim talks with Ed Latimore about his new book Hard Lessons from the Hurt Business: Boxing and the Art of Life. They discuss Ed's chess playing & street hustling, size differences in modern heavyweight boxing, growing up in Pittsburgh's Hill District, childhood trauma & violence, his relationships with his single mother & absent father, middle school & gifted programs, the cocaine prank incident, his high school football career, academic struggles, attending University of Rochester, spending his father's life insurance money, his boxing career, the All American Heavyweights program, alcohol abuse, sobriety, Olympic trials, military service, a degree in physics, his current life as an author & speaker, and much more. Episode Transcript Hard Lessons from the Hurt Business: Boxing and the Art of Life, by Ed Latimore "5 reasons why I quit boxing with only one loss," by Ed Latimore "The book made me do it—why I'm boxing again," by Ed LatimoreEd Latimore is a former professional heavyweight boxer, an amateur national champion, a competitive chess player, and a bestselling author with a B.A. in Physics from Duquesne University. He draws on his experiences in the boxing ring, in the classroom, and in recovery to teach people how to build grit and resilience.
Jim talks with Zak Stein and Marc Gafni about consciousness, attention, and value as fundamental aspects of reality. They explore continuity & discontinuity in evolution, phenomenology & naturalism, emergence, value theory, selection theory, mathematics as both discovered & created, pre-life organic chemistry, sexual selection & evolutionary dynamics, attraction/allurement across different emergent layers, evolving value, first principles & first values, the intimacy equation concept, desire as disclosing value, consciousness in animals vs simpler systems, machine consciousness, group selection theory, the evolution of complexity, the role of contingency & necessity, religious & materialist perspectives on value, and much more. Episode Transcript First Principles and First Values: Forty-Two Propositions on CosmoErotic Humanism, the Meta-Crisis, and the World to Come, by David J. Temple The Abolition of Man, by C.S. Lewis Presence: An Exploration of Profound Change in People, Organizations, and Society, by Peter M. Senge and Joseph Jaworski JRS EP301 - Zak Stein on K-12 Education in the AI Era JRS EP240 - Stuart Kauffman on a New Approach to CosmologyDr. Zachary Stein is a Co-Founder of the Civilization Research Institute and the Center for World Philosophy and Religion. He was trained at the interface of philosophy, psychology, and education and now works in fields related to the mitigation of global catastrophic risk. He is a widely sought-after and award-winning speaker and a leading authority on the future of education and contemporary issues in human development.Dr. Marc Gafni has been described as a world philosopher—a kind of galaxy heart brain—integrating wisdom from across multiple disciplines into what he has called a New Story of Value in response to the meta-crisis. He is the author of fifty books, including the award-winning A Return to Eros and Your Unique Self: The Radical Path to Personal Enlightenment, with the academic Journal of Integral Theory and Practice dedicating an entire issue to his Unique Self Theory. Marc is founder with Ken Wilber of the Center for World Philosophy and Religion, and President of the Foundation for Conscious Evolution, succeeding Barbara Marx Hubbard.
Jim talks with Chris Colin about his recent Atlantic article "That Dropped Call with Customer Service? It Was on Purpose." They discuss customer service hell & Chris's personal story with Ford, the concept of sludge, intentional friction in customer service systems, call center operations & tactics, high-quality customer service approaches, the impact of short-term CEO tenures on service quality, the Biden administration's attempts to address bureaucratic time tax, political implications of poor government services, administrative burden, coping mechanisms, consumer action possibilities, the psychological toll of dealing with poor service, Cory Doctorow's concept of "enshittification," responses to Chris's article, and much more. Episode Transcript Chris Colin's website "That Dropped Call with Customer Service? It Was on Purpose," by Chris Colin in The Atlantic (June 29, 2025) Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, by Richard Thaler and Cass SunsteinChris Colin has written about problematic billionaires, contentious river law, Barack Obama’s Irish roots, COVID memorialization efforts, Japanese rent-a-friends, endangered pasta and more for the New York Times, the Atlantic, NewYorker.com, Pop-Up Magazine, 99% Invisible, Outside and Wired. His work has been featured in Best American Science & Nature Writing, and he created José Andrés's podcast. In 2020 he launched Six Feet of Separation, a free pandemic newspaper by and for kids — “a virtual newspaper for our troubled times,” Dan Rather called it.
Jim talks with Lee Cronin about Chemify, his startup that aims to automate chemistry through "chemifarms" that turn code into molecules. They discuss Chemify as an AWS for chemistry, the development of a chemical programming language & its evolution to Turing completeness, quantum vs classical chemistry computation, open source tools & academic access, robotics & automation in chemistry, catalyst discovery & optimization, integration with tools like AlphaFold, business models, venture capital funding, supply chain implications, distributed manufacturing, personalized medicine possibilities, and much more. Episode Transcript Currents 100: Sara Walker and Lee Cronin on Time as an Object ChemifyLee Cronin is a chemist. He is the Regius Professor of Chemistry at the University of Glasgow and the Founder & CEO of Chemify. He is known for his approach to the digitization of chemistry and developing digital-to-chemical transformation known as Chemputing which can turn code into reactions and molecules. He has also developed a new theory for evolution and selection called assembly theory which aims to quantify and explain how selection can occur in chemistry before biology. Lee is also exploring how chemical systems can compute, and what is needed for the evolution of intelligence, as well as designing a new type of computational system that uses information encoded in chemical reactions and molecules.
Jim talks with Nicholas Humphrey about the ideas in his 2023 book Sentience: The Invention of Consciousness. They discuss the distinction between sentience & consciousness, access consciousness vs phenomenal consciousness, terminology in consciousness studies, ring-fencing theories, Nicholas's early experiments with phosphenes, the discovery of blindsight in monkeys, his relationship with Helen the monkey, color preferences in monkeys, sensation vs perception, realism vs illusionism, consciousness as art, the concept of "ipsundrum," the evolution of consciousness as "all or nothing," the Fermi paradox & the uniqueness of consciousness, qualophilia, consciousness in birds & mammals, theory of mind in different species, and much more. Episode Transcript Sentience: The Invention of Consciousness, by Nicholas Humphrey Seeing Red: A Study in Consciousness, by Nicholas Humphrey "How did consciousness evolve?" - lecture by Nicholas Humphrey The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, by Charles Darwin The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature, by Geoffrey Miller Yoshua Bengio: Deep Learning | Lex Fridman Podcast JRS EP148 - Antonio Damasio on Feeling and KnowingNicholas Humphrey is an English psychologist who studies the evolution of intelligence and consciousness. He was the first to demonstrate the existence of "blindsight" in monkeys, studied mountain gorillas with Dian Fossey in Rwanda, proposed the celebrated theory of the "social function of intellect," and has investigated the evolutionary background of religion, art, healing, death-awareness, and suicide. His honours include the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, the Pufendorf Medal, and the International Mind and Brain Prize. His most recent books are Seeing Red, Soul Dust, and Sentience.
Jim talks with Samo Burja about his report on the defense startup Anduril's plan to modernize the U.S. military. They discuss "live players vs. dead players," AI adoption & cognitive tools, Anduril's background & naming origin, military technology modernization, software-defined conflicts, autonomous & software-enabled weapons, sensor deployment & data collection, the Lattice software platform, hardware offerings including drone & underwater vehicle acquisitions, surface naval warfare obsolescence, military industrial capacity, US vs. China manufacturing capabilities, personnel-to-weapon system ratios, drone production scale, cost considerations, defense industry ecosystem, traditional contractors, friend-shoring possibilities, NATO+ industrial capacity, component manufacturing, future warfare implications, training advantages of digital systems, scale of drone warfare, AI capabilities gaps between nations, industrial advantages in military competition, and much more. Episode Transcript EP 244 Samo Burja on Lessons from the Russo-Ukrainian War Bismarck Brief "Anduril's Plan to Modernize the U.S. Military," by Samo Burja Rebooting the Arsenal of Democracy EP 247 Sergey Kuprienko on Drone Warfare in Ukraine Bismarck Analysis Foresight Institute Anduril Industries "Anduril Industries Acquires UAS Developer Blue Force Technologies" - Press ReleaseSamo Burja is the president and founder of Bismarck Analysis, a consulting firm specializing in institutional analysis for clients in North America and Europe. He is also a Senior Research Fellow in Political Science at the Foresight Institute and chair of the editorial board of Palladium Magazine. You can follow him at @SamoBurja.
Jim talks with Richard David Hames, picking up from the ideas in his recent Facebook essay about the decline of Western civilization. They discuss the retreat from truth in politics & institutions, postmodernism's impact on rationality, China's governance model, the failure of democratic institutions, wealth inequality & social stratification, the liberation of women as our era's defining achievement, climate change denial, the futility of modern warfare, AI's disruptive potential, the loss of character & virtue in leadership, living in a liminal period between worlds, and much more. Episode Transcript Richard's Facebook post Manmade: 50 Failings of Our Own Making, by Adam Jacoby and Richard Hames Education in a Time Between Worlds, by Zachary Stein Zak Stein's appearances on The Jim Rutt ShowRichard David Hames is a philosopher, activist, strategist, and advisor to boards and governments, mentoring leaders out of their manufactured normalcy. He is the author of several books, the most recent of which is Manmade: 50 Failings of Our Own Making, coauthored with Adam A. Jacoby.
Jim talks with David Chapman about rethinking nobility for the modern age through his recent "nobility tetralogy" of essays. They discuss character & virtue as "risible" concepts, noblesse oblige & elite education, nobility as intention vs status, "The Battle of Maldon" poem & its lessons, postmodernism & postmodernity, the failure of elite universities, effective altruism & Sam Bankman-Fried, Elon Musk & hubris, meritocracy & institutional change, Nietzsche's master-slave morality, Tolkien's models of nobility, Vajrayana Buddhism's life-affirming approach, software engineers eating the world, meta-rationality & the tech industry, new institutions, visions for a more playful & connected future, and much more. Episode Transcript "Nobility: table of contents," by David Chapman "Ofermöd," by David Chapman "You should be a God-Emperor," by David Chapman Meaningness, by David Chapman "Software engineers are eating the world," by David Chapman "Why Software Is Eating the World," by Marc AndreessenDavid Chapman writes and speaks about understanding meaning, purpose, and culture through resolving fundamental, unthought emotional stances that can make us miserable; leveling up technical work by going beyond formal rationality; Vajrayana, the life-affirming branch of Buddhism offering a vaster, brighter, freer way of seeing, feeling, and acting; and artificial intelligence (he has a PhD in it).
Jim talks with Thomas Schindler about heliogenic civilization as a vision for a regenerative future. They discuss the current multipolar trap shitshow of global civilization, M3 money supply & GDP growth requirements, the doubling of energy demand, exit to planet as an alternative to traditional business exits, biomimicry & biological approaches to manufacturing, solar energy as a fusion reactor, nature's material production vs human industrial production, construction systems using earth blocks & natural materials, bioregional self-sufficiency, feminine scaling vs traditional growth models, the Oslo Project as an inverse Manhattan Project, deep ecology & Arne Næss's philosophy, governance structures, education systems as symptoms of industry, coordination among farmers in Kenya, project governance & preventing OpenAI syndrome, Bernard Lietaer's alternative currency experiment, biological computing possibilities, solar energy & hydrogen electrolysis, ocean floor mining & environmental impacts, copper vs aluminum for electrical transmission, material constraints on renewable energy transition, and much more. Episode Transcript Thomas Schindler's website In service of Life. | Thomas Schindler's Substack Project MIRACLE Auroville Earth Institute Carbon Crusher Bind-XThomas is co-founder of delodi.net, a mission-driven software studio and the engine behind the not-for-profit initiatives MOTHERLAND, GITA, IRM, and Project MIRACLE. The throughline of his work lies in reimagining how societies generate value—shifting from extractive models to regenerative, life-centered systems that empower local communities. He’s particularly focused on helogenic civilization frameworks, bio-regional material commons, infrastructures of generosity, systemic change methodologies, and the intersections of technology, culture, and ecology. Motivated by the conviction that aligning collective creativity, open protocols, and local agency is essential to address today’s ecological and existential challenges, he writes, speaks, convenes and assemblies to catalyze these conversations and collaborations.
Jim talks with Anders Indset about his book The Singularity Paradox: Bridging the Gap Between Humanity and AI, co-authored with Florian Neutkart. They discuss the "final narcissistic injury of humankind," Freud's three historical narcissistic injuries, machine consciousness vs human consciousness, the "undead" state, human cognitive limitations, game theory dynamics & multipolar traps, Artificial Human Intelligence vs AGI/ASI approaches, consciousness preservation, chess AI & human cognition, coevolutionary dynamics between AHI & AGI/ASI, "playing to win" vs "playing to become," organizational design for anticipatory leadership, trust & friction as progress drivers, the three pillars of forging & investment & efficiency, reactive vs reflective societies, technical hygiene, "zombie apocalypse" scenarios, the role of agency, questions of identity & authenticity in an AI world, and much more. Episode Transcript Wild Knowledge: Outthink the Revolution, by Anders Indset The Quantum Economy: Saving the Mensch with Humanistic Capitalism, by Anders Indset The Viking Code: The Art and Science of Norwegian Success, by Anders Indset Ex Machina: The God Experiment, by Anders Indset and Florian Neukart The Singularity Paradox: Bridging the Gap Between Humanity and AI, by Anders Indset and Florian Neukart Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion, by Paul Bloom The Beginning of Infinity, by David DeutschAnders Indset is a business philosopher and author of four Spiegel bestsellers, with works translated into over ten languages. He has been recognized by Thinkers50 as one of the most influential thinkers in technology, economy, and leadership. In addition to writing books including The Quantum Economy, Ex Machina, and his newest title, The Singularity Paradox, the Norwegian-born polymath is also Chairman of the Njordis Group, a driving force behind initiatives like the Quantum Economy, and a deep-tech investor. He is a sought-after speaker at conferences such as the World Economic Forum, the Global HR Summit, and the Mobile World Congress.
Jim talks with J. Doyne Farmer about his book Making Sense of Chaos: A Better Economics for a Better World. They discuss deterministic chaos & strange attractors, how chaos makes time possible, bounded rationality, economic equilibrium & Nash equilibrium, traditional economics' failures, standard economic theory basics, "as if" vs "as is" approaches, heterogeneity in economic systems, agent-based modeling & its critiques, the "metabolism of civilization" analogy, financial markets as an ecology of strategies, the Prediction Company experience, climate economics, weather forecasting as an analogy for economic forecasting, energy investment modeling, technology cost curves & climate change solutions, the vision of a "conscious civilization," and much more. Episode Transcript Making Sense of Chaos: A Better Economics for a Better World, by J. Doyne Farmer The Eudaemonic Pie, by Thomas A. Bass A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming, by Paul N. EdwardsJ. Doyne Farmer is Director of the Complexity Economics programme at the Institute for New Economic Thinking and Baillie Gifford Professor of Complex Systems Science at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford. He is also External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute and CEO and Chief Scientist at Macrocosm. His current research is in economics, including agent-based modeling, financial instability and technological progress. He was a founder of Prediction Company, a quantitative automated trading firm that was sold to UBS in 2006. His past research includes complex systems, dynamical systems theory, time series analysis and theoretical biology. His book, Making Sense of Chaos: A Better Economics for a Better World, was published in 2024.
Jim talks with Samuel Arbesman about the ideas in his book The Magic of Code: How Digital Language Created and Connects Our World—and Shapes Our Future. They discuss Sam's motivation for writing the book, the wondering vs. utilitarian stances toward computing, early personal computing experiences, scale in programming, AI as a "hinge of history" moment, the democratization of code through AI tools, the dual nature of code as text & action, analogies between code & magic/mysticism, HyperCard as an early programming tool, the evolution of web development & protocols, layers of abstraction in computing, code golf, imperative vs. functional languages, recursion in programming, tools for thought & note-taking software, numeric modeling & world simulation, agent-based modeling & artificial life, the simulation hypothesis, research into "glitches in the matrix," and much more. Episode Transcript Overcomplicated: Technology at the Limits of Comprehension, by Samuel Arbesman The Half-Life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date, by Samuel Arbesman The Magic of Code: How Digital Language Created and Connects Our World—and Shapes Our Future, by Samuel Arbesman The Orthogonal Bet podcast "As We May Think," by Vannevar Bush Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, by Harold Abelson, Gerald Jay Sussman, Martin Henz, Tobias Wringstad The Art of Computer Programming, by Donald E. Knuth Network Wars Numerical Recipes: The Art of Scientific ComputingSamuel Arbesman is Scientist in Residence at Lux Capital. In addition, he is an xLab senior fellow at Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management and a research fellow at the Long Now Foundation. He is the author of The Magic of Code, Overcomplicated, and The Half-Life of Facts, and his writing has appeared in such places as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and Wired, where he was previously a contributing writer. He lives in Cleveland with his family. The first computer he used was a Commodore VIC-20.
Jim talks with Mark Stahlman about the new Pope Leo XIV and the Catholic Church's evolving role in a digital age. They discuss Trump as an avatar of the digital paradigm shift, the significance of Leo XIV's name choice, Francis as a thug, Francis's background as chemical engineer and bouncer, Synodality & Church decentralization, the exterior vs interior personas of Pope Francis, Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, the three pillars of Catholic social teaching, financial system reforms and new settlement currencies, the role of Dubai in blockchain/crypto development, multipolar traps & solidarity, generational changes & media consumption, the growth of Catholicism in France despite overall European decline, the Catholic Church's diplomatic efforts and interfaith outreach, the future of global systems, and much more. JRS EP290 - Mark Stahlman on Trump as the Avatar of the Digital Paradigm Shift Center for the Study of Digital Life (digitallife.center) Mark Stahlman's Substack (exogenous.substack.com) First Things (magazine) Trivium University (online graduate school mentioned) Rerum Novarum, by Pope Leo XIII (1891 encyclical) Quadragesimo Anno, by Pope Pius XI (1931 encyclical) Centesimus Annus, by Pope John Paul II (1991 encyclical) Aeterni Patris, by Pope Leo XIII (1879 encyclical) Return of the Strong Gods, by R.R. Reno "The Two Popes" (movie) "Dictator Pope" (book) God's Diplomats, by Victor GaetanMark Stahlman is a biologist, computer architect and ex-Wall Street technology strategist. He is the President of the not-for-profit Center for the Study of Digital Life (CSDL, 501(c)3, digitallife.center) and its educational project Trivium University (Triv U, trivium.university). He is also CEO of Exogenous, Inc. (EXO, exogenousinc.com), a strategic risk analysis group and on the editorial staff of its publication, the Three Spheres Newsletter (TSN). He studied for but did not complete advanced degrees in Theology (UofChicago) and Molecular Biology (UW-Mad). He has been widely interviewed and published, including teaching online courses (available on YouTube via 52 Living Ideas).
Jim talks with Daniel Mezick on the theme of games and their relationship to governance. They discuss Jane McGonigal's four properties of games, the nature of authority, position-based vs role-based authority, formal vs. informal authority structures, finite & infinite games, mutable games, the paradox of self-amendment, the U.S. Constitution as a game, progress tracking in governance systems, roles, artifacts, rules, events, Constitutional reforms, problems with a two-party system, unintended consequences in rule design, game theory & system design, gaming virtue, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS EP151: Daniel Mezick on Ritual and Hierarchy JRS EP219: Katherine Gehl on Breaking Partisan Gridlock Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World, by Jane McGonigal Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior, by Christopher Boehm Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization, by Dave Logan "The Tyranny of Structurelessness," by Jo Freeman Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility, by James Carse "The Paradox of Self-Amendment," by Peter Suber "Designing the Future," by Jay Forrester Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture, by Johan HuizingaCoaching executives and teams in Agile since 2006, Daniel Mezick leads Improving Agility. Daniel has guided dozens of organizations in the art and science of Agile improvement. An author and co-author of three books on organization change, Daniel is a frequent keynote speaker at industry conferences and events. He is the originator of OpenSpace Agility, an engagement model for enabling authentic and lasting organizational improvement. He is also an Advisory Board member and co-Founder of The Open Leadership Network, a certification body and community of practice dedicated to implementing Open patterns and practices inside business enterprises worldwide.
Jim talks with Zak Stein about the psychological and developmental risks of AI in K-12 education. They discuss education vs schooling, technology's role in human-to-human interaction, GPS & skill atrophy, prosthetic vs enhancement technologies, multipolar traps in AI, cognitive diminishment & skill development, teacherly authority, attention as a constrained resource, attention as a service, parasocial attachment, risks of anthropomorphizing AI, object relations theory, bad parenting & AI parenting, Daniel Dennett's proposal about criminalizing misrepresentation, design principles for responsible AI in education, non-anthropomorphic design, age limits, neurological safety, fiduciary security, the transhumanist ideology behind AI development, the need for better cultural & legal frameworks, and much more. Episode Transcript Education in a Time Between Worlds, by Zachary Stein JRS Currents 067: Ending Nihilistic Design (with Zak Stein) JRS EP57: Zak Stein on Education in a Time Between Worlds JRS EP60: Zak Stein on Educational Systems Collapse JRS EP62: Zak Stein on Education, Tech & Religion First Principles and First Values: Forty-Two Propositions on CosmoErotic Humanism, the Meta-Crisis, and the World to Come, by David J. Temple Reconstructing Value & Preserving Human Freedom In the Age of Artificial Intelligence: Exit the Silicon Maze Vol. 1, by David J. Temple, Marc Gafni, Zak Stein The Politics of Invisibility: Public Knowledge about Radiation Health Effects after Chernobyl, by Olga Kuchinskaya "The Problem with Counterfeit People," by Daniel Dennett Wayfinding: The Science and Mystery of How Humans Navigate the World, by M.R. O'ConnorDr. Zachary Stein is a Co-Founder of the Civilization Research Institute and the Center for World Philosophy and Religion. He was trained at the interface of philosophy, psychology, and education and now works in fields related to the mitigation of global catastrophic risk. He is a widely sought-after and award-winning speaker and a leading authority on the future of education and contemporary issues in human development.
Jim talks with Daniel Rodriguez about the state of AI software development and its implementation in industry. They discuss Daniel's background at Microsoft & Anaconda, transformer-based technologies, software engineering as hard vs soft science, vibe coding, barriers to entry in software engineering, cognitive styles needed for programming, Daniel's history with LLMs, unit testing & test-driven development with AI, social aspects of AI adoption, quality concerns & technical debt, style consistency & aesthetics, approaches to steering LLMs through roles & personas, philosophical perspectives on LLM consciousness & intelligence, personification & interaction styles, memory & conversation history in models, agent-based systems & their historical origins, the future of agent frameworks, customer/user interaction within agent ecosystems, distributed systems, future predictions about inference costs & protocols, IDEs & linting tools, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS EP 289 - Adam Levine on AI-Powered Programming for Non-DevelopersDaniel Rodriguez is Chief Architect and acting Technical Lead at r.Potential, the first enterprise platform for optimizing hybrid teams of humans and digital workers. As the venture’s overall technical architect, he designs and integrates a full stack of AI systems, combining Agentforce with advanced data, simulation, and orchestration technologies to bring that vision to life. Before r.Potential, Daniel bootstrapped and scaled retrieval-augmented AI services and agentic infrastructure at Anaconda. Earlier, at Microsoft, he maintained Azure TypeScript SDKs and co-created Visual Studio Code’s Jupyter and Data Wrangler extensions, expanding cloud and data-science workflows.
Jim talks with Ryan Blosser about the ideas in his book Mulberries in the Rain: Growing Permaculture Plants for Food and Friendship, co-authored with Trevor Piersol. They discuss the motivation behind writing a permaculture book, the human sector in permaculture design, financial challenges of permaculture farming, 8 forms of capital, food forest design principles, plant guild functions & relationships, persimmons, hunting stories, willows, redbuds, bourbon, black locust properties, rhubarb as a barrier plant, spring bulbs, garlic, Hawaiian adventures, the benefits of tulsi, growing cannabis, uses of comfrey, beets for deer plots, burdock as medicine, community, climate considerations, water management, soil fertility, aesthetics in design, and much more. Episode Transcript Mulberries in the Rain: Growing Permaculture Plants for Food and Friendship, by Ryan Blosser and Trevor Pearsall Jitterbug Perfume, by Tom RobbinsRyan Blosser is a farmer, educator, permaculture designer, writer, and mental health professional. He is co-founder of the Shenandoah Permaculture Institute and owner/operator of Dancing Star Farm. In addition, he holds a teaching license in the State of Virginia and earned an MA and Ed.S. in clinical mental health counseling from James Madison University. Ryan served as Executive Director of Project GROWS, an educational non-profit farm dedicated to growing healthy communities. He also taught permaculture design and gardening in Staunton Public Schools before accepting a position with Waynesboro School, where he directs the continued development of the Waynesboro Education Farm. The intersection of his twin passions for growing food and helping people fuels his unique perspective on building community health and resilience through permaculture design. Ryan lives in Churchville, VA.
Jim talks with Adam Lake about Reboot America, a project aimed at reforming American democracy. They discuss existential threats facing humanity, the two-party corporate duopoly, a Princeton study on policy preferences, first-past-the-post voting problems, campaign finance issues, social media's role in polarization, wealth & income inequality, Bernie Sanders's Fight Oligarchy tour, the Democratic Party's cultural baggage, Trump country perspectives, courage in leadership, how the quality of leadership has changed over time, the "politician's pledge" & its six points, ranked-choice voting, proportional representation systems, liquid democracy, the People's Agenda concept, lessons from the Emancipation Party & GameB, and much more. Episode Transcript The Politics Industry, by Katherine Gehl JRS EP219 with Katherine Gehl on Breaking Partisan Gridlock RebootAmerica.us No Labels - Our Ideas The Perception Gap Voice of the People (vop.org)Adam Lake is the founder of Reboot America, an emerging framework for a movement aimed at revitalizing the American political system by realigning it with the founding principles of our democratic republic. With a background in economics and experience in business development for a digital identity company whose technology empowers individuals to protect their civil liberties in the digital world, he brings a pragmatic approach to tackling systemic political challenges.Currently, he is engaging with voices in the democracy renewal and independent media spaces, exploring how to build momentum for a transpartisan effort that challenges the entrenched two-party duopoly. He's not a politician or a pundit—just someone determined to find a way forward.
Jim talks with Sara Walker about the ideas in her new book Life as No One Knows It: The Physics of Life's Emergence. They discuss Sara's path from theoretical physics to astrobiology, the biggest scientific questions, philosophy of science & theory development, historical approaches to origin of life research, Schrödinger's negative entropy concept, Prigogine's dissipative systems, information as a causal force at life's origin, emergence as a scientific concept, constructor theory of information, Assembly Theory as a framework for detecting life, assembly index & copy number as measurable properties, complexity vs randomness, the physical nature of time in complex systems, how Assembly Theory redefines life beyond Earth-centric definitions, planetary-scale perspectives on life's origins, measurements of exoplanet atmospheres, addressing the error catastrophe problem, Sara's collaboration with Lee Cronin, the application of Assembly Theory to minerals & planetary atmospheres, the Fermi Paradox & observational horizons, constraints on Drake equation parameters, and much more. Episode Transcript Life as No One Knows It: The Physics of Life's Emergence, by Sara Walker JRS Currents 100 - Sarah Walker and Lee Cronin on Time as an Object The Emergence of Everything: How the World Became Complex, by Harold Morowitz The Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution, by Stuart KauffmanSara Walker is a theoretical physicist interested in the origins of life and discovering alien life on other worlds. She is Deputy Director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science, a Professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University and an External Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. Her recognition as a leading scientist includes a Stanley Miller Early Career award, and a Schmidt Sciences Polymath award. Her research team at ASU is internationally regarded for their work at the forefront of building fundamental, and testable theory for understanding what life is. She is also widely regarded for her public intellectual work advancing our understanding of life, which includes her popular science book Life as No One Knows It: The Physics of Life’s Emergence and appearances on podcasts such as Star Talk with Neil de Grasse Tyson, the Joe Rogan Experience, and the Lex Fridman podcast.
Jim talks with Ashley Hodgson about her YouTube series "The New Enlightenment" and its heterodox perspectives on economics and social systems. They discuss Iain McGilchrist's influence & his book "The Matter with Things," economic mythology & its role in upholding the current system, the Bernays era of programmed consumerism, GDP growth myths, destructive growth value, problems with GDP, resource extraction vs other forms of growth, Galbraith's economics, corporate accountability structures, distortions in the information environment, changes in management compensation, the consumer sovereignty myth, the role of the technostructure, manufactured desires vs actual needs, behavioral economics & rationality, problems with "debunking" mindset, the meta-crisis, sense-making challenges, voice & exit rights, coherent pluralism, the "creepy utopia" problem, and much more. Episode Transcript The New Enlightenment (YouTube channel) The Matter with Things, by Iain McGilchrist JRS EP 154 - Iain McGilchrist on The Matter with Things The Economics of Innocent Fraud, by John Kenneth Galbraith The New Industrial State, by John Kenneth Galbraith Debt: The First 5,000 Years, by David Graeber The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, by Shoshana ZuboffAshley Hodgson is an economics professor and a YouTuber. Her teaching history includes behavioral economics, health care economics, digital industries, blockchain economics, public health, ageing, and game theory, among other courses. She enjoys co-teaching as a way of fostering interdisciplinary dialogues and has co-taught courses with faculty in anthropology, psychology, statistics, and biology. Hodgson’s YouTube channel, The New Enlightenment, looks at paradigm shifts in economics, governance and knowledge systems, and parallels her own research and book writing.
Jim talks with John Robb about the ideas in his recent essay "Blitzing DC," about how a networked organization took over Washington. They discuss the early roots of network warfare in Iraq, McLuhan-esque societal rewiring, open source dynamics & plausible promise, the Arab Spring & Occupy movements, empathy triggers, Trump's 2016 campaign as a hybrid swarm, The_Donald as a meme amplifier, the Blue Network's counter-response, the George Floyd protests & moral framework, censorship & 'the long night', digital rights & moderation, the Ukraine conflict & swarm response, the Red Network reconfiguration, digital ledgers & truth-seeking accounts, the professionalization of Red digital warriors, network decision-making at a societal level, the government contracting corruption, defense procurement issues, the D.C. area wealth concentration, the future of network organizations, and much more. Episode Transcript Global Guerrillas (Substack) JRS EP 254 - John Robb on What Went Wrong with America "Blitzing DC," by John Robb "The Open-Source War," by John Robb (New York Times) "Musk and Moderation," by Jim Rutt (Quillette)John Robb is an author, inventor, entrepreneur, technology analyst, astro engineer, and military pilot. He’s started numerous successful technology companies, including one in the financial sector that sold for $295 million and one that pioneered the software we currently see in use at Facebook and Twitter. John’s insight on technology and governance has appeared on the BBC, Fox News, National Public Radio, CNBC, The Economist, the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and BusinessWeek. John served as a pilot in a tier-one counter-terrorism unit that worked alongside Delta and Seal Team 6. He wrote the book Brave New War on the future of national security, and has advised the Joint Chiefs of Staff, NSA, DoD, CIA, and the House Armed Services Committee.
Jim talks with Timothy Clancy about wicked mess problems & the potential for a new Cold War centered on AI. They discuss the evolution from chat-based to reasoning AI, military applications, social & systemic complexity in national security, the scaling hypothesis, China vs US competition, DeepSeek R1 model implications, export controls on GPU chips, Taiwan's strategic importance, multipolar trap & arms race dynamics, power & chip requirements, training vs implementation costs, context scaling in reasoning AI, innovation in AI efficiency, models & simulations in military planning, validation challenges, statistical distributions vs single predictions, Taiwan conflict scenarios & deterrence strategies, operational causality, the strategic importance of the Straits of Malacca, and much more. Episode Transcript "Applying AI to Strategic Warning," by Anna Knack, Nandita Balakrishnan, and Timothy Clancy JRS EP57 - Timothy Clancy on Russia's Mid-Game JRS EP248 - Timothy Clancy on the Israel-Hamas War "MegaMullet: The DeepSeek Moment – The Start of an AI Cold War," by Timothy ClancyTimothy Clancy is an Assistant Research Scientist at START specializing in studying wicked mess problems, including violence and instability, as complex systems. For over 30 years Timothy has helped stakeholders in all manner of organizations understand their wicked mess problems and work towards resolving them. This included prior work at IBM where he was the Chief Methodologist of Lean, Six Sigma, and Agile supporting Fortune 50, government, and military clients to navigate their own wicked messes in strategy, business models, and enterprise transformation.
Jim talks with Brendan Graham Dempsey, picking up on a disagreement they had on Facebook about the teleology of the universe. They discuss Aristotle's influence on the topic, Terrence Deacon's work on naturalizing teleology, the distinction between purpose & goal-directed behavior, cosmic teleology, Teilhard de Chardin's "Omega Point," Whitehead's relational teleology, Ilya Prigogine's dissipative structures, energy efficiency comparisons between organisms & stars, the cosmic imperative of entropy production, energy rate density as a complexity measure, whether entropy is the goal or a byproduct of complexification, origin of life as contingent or necessity, Alexander Bard's emergence vectors, questioning of the heat death hypothesis, cosmic expansion possibly preventing maximum entropy, Webb telescope findings, Lee Smolin's evolutionary universe theory, philosophical implications of cosmological narratives, the deepening of interiority in cosmic evolution, Nick Chater's "The Mind Is Flat" argument, the importance of intersubjectivity, language's role in human experience, AI development & emotions, critique of transhumanism, the need to defend your emergence vector, and much more. Episode Transcript Jim's initial Facebook post JRS EP268 - Brendan Graham Dempsey on the Evolution of Meaning The Evolution of Meaning: A Universal Learning Process, by Brendan Graham Dempsey JRS EP157 - Terrence Deacon on Mind's Emergence from Matter Cosmic Evolution: The Rise of Complexity in Nature, by Eric Chaisson The Mind Is Flat, by Nick Chater "The Last Question," by Isaac AsimovBrendan Graham Dempsey is a writer, researcher, organic farmer, and the director of Sky Meadow Institute, an organization dedicated to "promoting systems-based thinking about the things that matter most." He graduated summa cum laude with a BA in religious studies and classical civilizations from the University of Vermont and earned his master's from Yale University, where he studied religion and culture. He is the author of Metamodernism: Or, The Cultural Logic of Cultural Logics and host of the Metamodern Spirituality Podcast. His primary interests include theorizing developments in culture after postmodernism, productively bridging the divide between science and spirituality, and developing sustainable systems for life to flourish. All of these lead through the paradigms of emergence and complexity, which inform all of his work.
Jim talks with Emil Ejner Friis about political metamodernism and what comes after postmodernism. They discuss the "woke vacuum" & its failure to include common folks, psychosocial problems vs material challenges in Western countries, Jim's pushback on postmodernism, Trump as the first postmodern president, personal vs institutional change, emotional states & leadership, late-stage financialized capitalism's effects on communities, European vs American approaches to industry/manufacturing, military alliances & European defense independence, the urban-rural divide in American politics, "internet trans" vs medical gender dysphoria, social media's role in amplifying cultural divisions, the intersubjective verification of the inter-objective, comparing the internet with the printing press, multi-party vs two-party political systems, the potential for American democratic renewal, and much more. Episode Transcript The Listening Society, by Hanzi Freinacht Nordic Ideology, by Hanzi Freinacht JRS EP36 – Hanzi Freinacht on Metamodernism JRS EP53 – Hanzi Freinacht on the Nordic Ideology JRS EP82 – Hanzi Freinacht on Building a Metamodern Future JRS EP173 – Hanzi Freinacht on Metamodern Self-Help Metamoderna (website/organizationEmil Ejner Friis is a theory artist and a teacher of metamodernism. He is a co-founder of Metamoderna and one of the writers behind Hanzi Freinacht. He has spent the last ten years trying to figure out how to create a listening society, a kinder and more developed society that deeply cares for the happiness and emotional needs of every citizen.
Jim talks with Jeff Sebo about the ideas in his book The Moral Circle: Who Matters, What Matters, and Why. They discuss the concept of the moral circle, harming cats vs harming cars, the case study of Happy the elephant, Descartes' view of animals, phenomenal consciousness, Thomas Nagel's bat argument, the Google engineer who claimed LaMDA was conscious, the substrate dependence of consciousness, a factory waste disposal dilemma, animal rescue triage scenarios, probability calculations in moral consideration, the "one in a thousand" threshold, computational constraints in moral calculations, human exceptionalism & its limitations, fully automated luxury communism & rewilding Earth, responsibilities to wild animals, humans as a custodial species, and much more. Episode Transcript The Moral Circle: Who Matters, What Matters, and Why, by Jeff Sebo "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" by Thomas Nagel Saving Animals, Saving Ourselves: Why Animals Matter for Pandemics, Climate Change, and other Catastrophes, by Jeff Sebo Ethics and the Environment, by Dale JamiesonJeff Sebo is Associate Professor of Environmental Studies, Affiliated Professor of Bioethics, Medical Ethics, Philosophy, and Law, Director of the Center for Environmental and Animal Protection, Director of the Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy, and Co-Director of the Wild Animal Welfare Program at New York University. His research focuses on animal minds, ethics, and policy; AI minds, ethics, and policy; and global health and climate ethics and policy. He is the author of The Moral Circle and Saving Animals, Saving Ourselves and co-author of Chimpanzee Rights and Food, Animals, and the Environment. He is also a board member at Minding Animals International, an advisory board member at the Insect Welfare Research Society, and a senior affiliate at the Institute for Law & AI. In 2024 Vox included him on its Future Perfect 50 list of "thinkers, innovators, and changemakers who are working to make the future a better place."
Jim talks with Mark Stahlman about Trump as an avatar of the current digital transformation. They discuss the GameB movement & complexity theory, predictions made to the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment, security through development as alternative to war, the three spheres (East, West, Digital), China's approach to digital vs. the Western approach, Catholic social teaching principles, neo-feudalism vs. the scribal paradigm, Humanity 2.0, Aristotelian concepts of soul & hylomorphism, Cyber Sabbath practices, transitions between oral/scribal/digital paradigms, technological change as evolutionary pruning, Jonathan Rauch's Constitution of Knowledge, memory & imagination as key faculties, versions of the Enlightenment project, Daoism & Eastern philosophy, coherent pluralism, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS EP 174 - Fred Beuttler and Mark Stahlman on Trivium University Center for the Study of Digital Life Exogenous (Mark's Substack) The Three-Body Problem, by Liu Cixin Analogia: The Emergence of Technology Beyond Programmable Control, by George Dyson JRS EP 287 - Jonathan Rauch on the Epistemic Crisis Science and Civilization in China, by Joe NeedhamMark Stahlman is a biologist, computer architect and ex-Wall Street technology strategist. He is the President of the not-for-profit Center for the Study of Digital Life (CSDL, 501(c)3, digitallife.center) and its educational project Trivium University (Triv U, trivium.university). He is also CEO of Exogenous, Inc. (EXO, exogenousinc.com), a strategic risk analysis group and on the editorial staff of its publication, the Three Spheres Newsletter (TSN). He studied for but did not complete advanced degrees in Theology (UofChicago) and Molecular Biology (UW-Mad). He has been widely interviewed and published, including teaching online courses (available on YouTube via 52 Living Ideas).
Jim talks with Adam B. Levine about AI programming aids for non-techies and the future of Bitcoin. They discuss Adam's background as a "technical non-technical" person, the evolution from manual LLM prompting to using IDEs, Windsurf as an AI-first IDE, Claude 3.7's thinking mode, productivity improvements with AI coding tools, different platforms like Cursor and Cline, the "pure idea space" vs technical execution, the role of liberal arts people in tech teams, Bitcoin as digital gold, Schelling points in cryptocurrency, the US dollar as hegemonic currency, "pools of fools" theory, sovereign wealth funds moving into Bitcoin, El Salvador's Bitcoin investment, Texas and Wyoming considering sovereign Bitcoin funds, game theory of nation-state Bitcoin adoption, regulatory transitions, predictions about Bitcoin's future based on sovereign adoption, and much more. Episode Transcript The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer, by Neal Stephenson Speaking of Bitcoin Podcast (formerly Let's Talk Bitcoin!)Adam B. Levine has spent over a decade pioneering disruptive technologies before they become mainstream. He launched one of the earliest Bitcoin podcasts, Let's Talk Bitcoin! (2013), founded Tokenly (2014)—one of the earliest companies exploring what could be done with blockchain tokens—and served as CoinDesk's first podcast editor (2019), hosting shows like Speaking of Bitcoin and Markets Daily. In 2021, he founded 330.ai, a startup building cutting-edge tools to boost creativity with AI.
Jim talks with BJ Campbell about the ideas in his Substack essay "On Cops, Belief, and Chainsaw Faced Robot Dogs." They discuss forms of social control, absolute police states vs. belief states, the role of belief vs. actual enforcement in maintaining order, the noble lie concept & Plato's original formulation, the 2020 crime spike & "defund the police" movement, the history of police forces & alternative methods of maintaining order, the "God-shaped hole" concept, membranes & group coherence, anthropological research on fairness, non-supernatural belief systems, marketing challenges for new social systems, money as a noble lie & coordination signal, Saudi Arabian social control methods, and much more. Episode Transcript Handwaving Freakoutery (Substack) JRS Currents 090: BJ Campbell and Patrick Ryan on Egregores JRS Currents 024: BJ Campbell on the Woke Religion "On Cops, Belief, and Chainsaw Faced Robot Dogs," by BJ Campbell The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, by Daniel DennettBJ Campbell is a licensed professional civil engineer and practicing hydrologist who consults in the land development and environmental industries. In addition to his Substack Handwaving Freakoutery, he writes for Open Source Defense, Quillette, and Recoil Magazine.
Jim talks with Jonathan Rauch about the ideas in his book The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth. They discuss the epistemic crisis, Plato's Theaetetus, Trump & propaganda techniques, the Constitution of Knowledge as a framework for epistemics, the "marketplace of ideas" metaphor, the reality-based community, the personal-institutional spiral, the social funnel of knowledge, social media's impact on epistemics, advertising vs subscription models, meme space pollution, the anti-vax movement, the importance of free speech to the gay rights movement, recommendations for defending truth, supporting institutions, speaking out against misinformation, maintaining viewpoint diversity, and much more. Episode Links The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth, by Jonathan Rauch Plato's Theaetetus Heterodox Academy JRS EP273 - Gregg Henriques on the Unified Theory of Knowledge Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality, by Renée DiResta Cross Purposes: Christianity's Broken Bargain with Democracy, by Jonathan RauchJonathan Rauch, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, is the author of eight books and many articles on public policy, culture, and government. He is a contributing writer for The Atlantic and recipient of the 2005 National Magazine Award, the magazine industry’s equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize. His latest book, published in 2021 by the Brookings Press, is The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth, a spirited and deep-diving account of how to push back against disinformation, canceling, and other new threats to our fact-based epistemic order.
Jim talks with Bob Levy about presidential powers, their history, and their potential for abuse. They discuss the nature of the presidential pardon, recent controversial pardons by Trump & Biden, proposed reforms, 3 main purposes of the pardon, court blocks on executive actions, the firing of federal employees, the Impoundment Control Act, immigration & deportation under Trump, presidential power over tariffs, courts as guardrails, the timeline for legal challenges, potential constitutional crisis scenarios, Congress's abdication of power, the growth of the administrative state, options if Trump defies court orders, contempt powers, impeachment as the ultimate check, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS EP245 - Bob Levy on the Second Amendment and Supreme Court "The US needs to rein in presidential pardon power," by Bob Levy JRS EP275 - Rachel Winkler on Mass DeportationBob Levy was, for 14 years, chairman of the board of directors at the Cato Institute. He is now chairman emeritus. Bob joined Cato as senior fellow in constitutional studies in 1997 after 25 years in business. The Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies is named in his honor. He has also served on boards of the Federalist Society, the Foundation for Government Accountability, and the Institute for Justice. Bob received his PhD in business from the American University in 1966, then founded CDA Investment Technologies, a major provider of investment information and software. At age 50, after leaving CDA in 1991, Bob went to George Mason law school, where he was chief articles editor of the law review and class valedictorian. He received his JD degree in 1994. The next two years he clerked for Judge Royce Lamberth on the US District Court and Judge Douglas Ginsburg on the US Court of Appeals, both in Washington, DC.
Jim talks with Josh Bernoff, author of Writing Without Bullshit, about the impact of AI on writing education and professional writing. They discuss Josh's background and career, Stephen Lane's recent op-ed arguing that AI should take over writing mechanics, problems with AI-generated writing, the role of writing in thinking, ChatGPT's "deep research," Jim's ScriptHelper project, the decline in math & navigation skills, the importance of memos for corporate decision-making, literacy as a fundamental life skill, Ethan Mollick's approach to AI in education, writing as art, the PowerPoint problem, the Idiocracy scenario, and much more. Episode Transcript "Could AI Replace the Teaching of Writing?: Why the Boston Globe op-ed is dead wrong" - Josh's blog post "AI in the classroom could spare educators from having to teach writing" - Stephen Lane's Boston Globe op-ed Writing Without Bullshit, by Josh Bernoff The Age of Intent: Using Artificial Intelligence to Deliver a Superior Customer Experience, by P.V. Kannan with Josh BernoffJosh Bernoff is an expert on how business books can propel thinkers to prominence. He is the author of Build a Better Business Book: How to Plan, Write, and Promote a Book That Matters – A Comprehensive Guide for Authors and Writing Without Bullshit: Boost Your Career by Saying What You Mean, as well as coauthor of Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies. He works closely with nonfiction authors as an advisor, coach, editor, or ghostwriter.
Jim talks with Jordan Hall about the relationship between humanity and advanced AI. They discuss the false dichotomy of state vs market control of AI, the commons & the church as organizing principles, community vs society, why alignment with humanity is by definition impossible, the role of symbols & organizing principles in communities, how Moloch & Mammon shape AI development, hyper-concentration of power, neo-feudalism, the possibility of an AI singleton, entropy in communities, an alternative path centered on intimate AI, individual values, integrity, restoration of the commons, the potential for rapid dissemination, the choice between good & expediency, mutual self-correction, collective action guided by higher values, the need for a properly functioning priestly class, and much more. Episode Transcript Jordan's tweet Jim's response JRS EP8 – Jordan “Greenhall” Hall and Game B JRS EP26 – Jordan Hall on the Game B Emergence JRS EP 170 – John Vervaeke and Jordan Hall on The Religion That Is Not a Religion JRS EP 223 – Jordan Hall on Cities, Civiums, and Becoming Christian JRS EP 255 Is God Real? (with Jordan Hall) JRS EP 281 - Jeff Hawkins and Viviane Clay on the Thousand Brains TheoryJordan Hall is the Co-founder and Executive Chairman of the Neurohacker Collective. He is now in his 17th year of building disruptive technology companies. Jordan’s interests in comics, science fiction, computers, and way too much TV led to a deep dive into contemporary philosophy (particularly the works of Gilles Deleuze and Manuel DeLanda), artificial intelligence and complex systems science, and then, as the Internet was exploding into the world, a few years at Harvard Law School where he spent time with Larry Lessig, Jonathan Zittrain and Cornel West examining the coevolution of human civilization and technology.
Jim talks with Brian Chau about what the new administration could mean for AI development. They discuss recent actions by the Tump administration including repealing Biden's executive order & the Stargate infrastructure project, Biden's impact on AI, the formation of the Alliance for the Future, regulatory bureaucracy, state patchwork laws, censorship, the Gemini controversy & DEI in AI, safety restrictions in chat models, the meaning of DeepSeek, economic implications of model distillation, historical analogies for AI development, national security & sovereignty implications, 3 main lanes for AI development, democratized access vs gatekeeping, trust issues, "AI" vs "LLMs," and much more. Episode Transcript Alliance for the Future From the New World (Substack) Brian Chau on Twitter JRS EP200 - Brian Chau on AI Pluralism Nous Research JRS EP221 - George Hotz on Open-Source Driving Assistance AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can’t, and How to Tell the Difference, by Arvind Narayanan and Sayash KapoorBrian Chau is a mathematician by training and is tied for the youngest Canadian to win a gold medal at the International Olympiad in Informatics. He writes software for a living while posting on his spare time. He writes independently on American bureaucracy and political theory and has contributed to Tablet Magazine. His political philosophy can be summed up as “see the world as it is, not as you wish it to be.” Everything else is application.
Jim talks with Tyson Yunkaporta about the ideas in his new book Right Story, Wrong Story: Adventures in Indigenous Thinking. They discuss a symbolic emu visitor on Jim's farm, Aboriginal collective pronouns, Sand Talk's impact, wrong canoes, lore vs law, how Aboriginal law adapted to invasion, ritualized violence & rule-governed fighting, Aboriginal knowledge systems & peer review, signals & spirit in natural systems, the sacred as a way to deal with complex systems, Plato's noble lie, restricted knowledge, Aboriginal law & the Jewish Torah, plague impacts, art as store of capital vs communal knowledge, the metaphor & mythology of water dowsing, Tyson's upcoming book, how to be a deeply spiritual skeptical atheist, and much more. Episode Transcript Right Story, Wrong Story: Adventures in Indigenous Thinking, by Tyson Yunkaporta Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World, by Tyson Yunkaporta JRS EP 65 - Tyson Yunkaporta on Indigenous Complexity JRS EP 66 - Tyson Yunkaporta on Indigenous Knowledge JRS Currents 032 - Tyson Yunkaporta on Spirits, GameB & Protopias JRS Currents 010 - Tyson Yunkaporta on Humans as Custodial Species Deakin University - Indigenous Systems Knowledge LabTyson Yunkaporta is an academic, an arts critic, and a researcher who is a member of the Apalech Clan in far north Queensland. He carves traditional tools and weapons and also works as a senior lecturer in Indigenous Knowledges at Deakin University in Melbourne. He lives in Melbourne and is the author of Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World.
Jim talks with Jeff Hawkins and Viviane Clay about the Thousand Brains Project and Jeff's book A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence. They discuss Mountcastle's theory of the neocortex's universal algorithm, cortical columns & their structure, learning modules in AI sensory systems, reprogramming of the neocortex, the 6 layers of cortex, mini-columns & macro-columns, the visual cascade, reference frames as essential for knowledge representation, "voting" for perceptual consensus, how the project differs from deep learning & LLM approaches, James Gibson's concept of affordances, the "Jennifer Aniston neuron" idea, current state of the Monty project, solving fundamental problems vs making impressive demos, avoiding "old brain" traits in AI systems, and much more. Episode Transcript Perceptual Neuroscience: The Cerebral Cortex, Vernon B. Mountcastle On Intelligence, Jeff Hawkins and Sandra Blakeslee (2004) A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence, Jeff Hawkins Monty Project – Open-Source Implementation Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, Nick BostromJeff Hawkins is a scientist whose life-long interest in neuroscience led to the creation of Numenta and its focus on neocortical theory. His research focuses on how the cortex learns predictive models of the world through sensation and movement. In 2002, he founded the Redwood Neuroscience Institute, where he served as Director for three years. The institute is currently located at U.C. Berkeley. Previously, he co-founded two companies, Palm and Handspring, where he designed products such as the PalmPilot and Treo smartphone. Jeff has written two books, On Intelligence (2004 with Sandra Blakeslee) and A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence (2021).Viviane Clay is the director of the Thousand Brains Project. She received her doctorate degree in Cognitive Computing and master’s degree in Cognitive Science at University of Osnabrück in Germany, where she focused on sensorimotor learning as a key aspect in intelligence. She brings to Numenta fifteen years of coding experience, along with her background in neuroscience, psychology, and machine learning.
Jim talks with Rob Henderson about his book Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class and the concept of luxury beliefs. They discuss Rob's journey from foster care to Yale and Cambridge, Jim's background, the decline in two-parent families from 1960 to 2005, changing forms of elite hypocrisy, intra-elite competition, corporate adoption of woke beliefs, enforcement of ideological conformity, the spread of academic ideas into mainstream culture, attributions of success, drugs and gambling as luxury beliefs, the self-control aristocracy, Western environmentalism's impact on Sub-Saharan Africa, elite opinion vs public opinion, and much more. Episode Transcript Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class, by Rob Henderson Rob Henderson's Newsletter Marc Andreessen's interview with Ross Douthat in the New York Times "What the Left Did to Me and My Family," by Christopher RufoRob Henderson grew up in foster homes in Los Angeles and in the rural town of Red Bluff, California. After enlisting in the U.S. Air Force at the age of seventeen, he subsequently attended Yale on the GI Bill and was then awarded the Gates Cambridge Scholarship to study at the University of Cambridge, where he obtained a PhD in psychology in 2022. He is currently a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a Contributing Editor for City Journal, and his Substack newsletter is sent each week to more than 70 thousand subscribers.
Jim talks with epidemiology expert Samuel Scarpino about the recent spread of H5N1 (bird flu) in dairy cows and its implications for public health. They discuss the historical context of H5N1, fatality rates, modeling the spread, network effects in disease transmission, current surveillance efforts, H5N1 transmission mechanisms, challenges of human respiratory transmission, lessons learned & mislearned from Covid-19, the current state of the H5N1 vaccine preparation, extreme pandemic response scenarios, Sam's current risk assessment, economic impacts including egg & dairy prices, recommendations for immediate action, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS Currents 099 - Sam Scarpino on Preparing for the Next Pandemic JRS Currents 047 - Samuel Scarpino on the Epidemiology of Covid-19 Center for Advanced Preparedness and Threat Response Simulation (CAPTRS) Global.health MetaculusSamuel Scarpino is the Director of AI + Life Sciences at the Institute for Experiential AI at Northeastern University and a Professor of the Practice in Health and Computer Sciences. He holds appointments in the Institute for Experiential AI and the Network Science, Global Resilience, and Roux Institutes. Prior to joining Northeastern in November 2022, Scarpino was the Vice President of Pathogen Surveillance at The Rockefeller Foundation and Chief Strategy Officer at Dharma Platform (a social impact, technology startup). Outside of these roles, he has over 10 years of experience translating research into decision support and data science/AI tools across diverse sectors from public health and clinical medicine to real estate and energy.
Jim has a wide-ranging conversation with recurring guest Peter Wang on AI copyright frameworks and the rapidly changing tech landscape. They discuss "the Chattening" (ChatGPT's release in November 2022) & its impact, parallels between current AI & the invention of science, humans as narrow-band sensors, cybernetics & control systems, the unbearable slowness of being, the Platonic Representation Hypothesis, language & intelligence, why eyeballs are white, copyright challenges with AI, the Anaconda ML Public License framework for AI rights & usage permissions, AI's impact on various industries, impacts on software engineering careers, giant frontier models vs specialty models, AI models' convergence on underlying reality, representation complexity, evaluation frameworks, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS EP16 - Anaconda CTO Peter Wang on The Distributed InternetJRS Currents 092: Peter Wang on The Meaning Crisis and Consequentiality "The Unbearable Slowness of Being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s?" by Jieyu Zheng & Markus Meister "The Platonic Representation Hypothesis," by Minyoung Huh, Brian Cheung, Tongzhou Wang, & Phillip Isola "Selling Wine Without Bottles: The Economy of Mind on the Global Net," by John Perry Barlow Bluesky Qwen2.5 Instruct (model)Peter Wang is the Chief AI and Innovation Officer and Co-founder of Anaconda. Peter leads Anaconda’s AI Incubator, which focuses on advancing core Python technologies and developing new frontiers in open-source AI and machine learning, especially in the areas of edge computing, data privacy, and decentralized computing.
Jim talks with Kristian Rönn, co-founder of the carbon accounting tech company Normative, about his book The Darwinian Trap: The Hidden Evolutionary Forces That Explain Our World (and Threaten Our Future). They discuss Darwinian traps & demons, the parable of Picher, Oklahoma, the "cost of doing business" mentality, beauty filter arms races, perverse incentives in science, Goodhart's law, how nature deals with defection vs cooperation, kamikaze mutants, pandas as evolutionary dead ends, close calls with nuclear weapons, engineered pathogens, AI risk, radical transparency at the nation-state level, reputation systems, types of reciprocity, distributed reputation marketplaces, developing Darwinian demon literacy, local change, and much more. Episode Transcript The Darwinian Trap: The Hidden Evolutionary Forces That Explain Our World (and Threaten Our Future), by Kristian Rönn "Five Rules for Cooperation," by Martin Nowak "The Vulnerable World Hypothesis," by Nick BostromKristian Rönn is a founder, author, and global governance advocate. He pioneered cloud-based carbon accounting by founding Normative, a platform that helps thousands of companies achieve net-zero emissions. A proponent of effective altruism, Kristian advocates for prioritizing the wellbeing of Earth's inhabitants as the key metric for progress. Before Normative, he worked at Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute, focusing on global catastrophic risks and AI. He has contributed to numerous global standards, legislation, and resolutions on climate and AI governance.
Jim talks with philosopher and cognitive scientist Carolyn Dicey Jennings about her book Attention and Mental Control. They discuss mental control vs self-control, the ping pong metaphor, prioritization vs single-threaded focus, voluntary vs automatic attention, perceptual processing & conscious attention, 3 forms of interest, meditation & mind wandering, hyperfocus as a superpower, ADHD & neurodiversity, the emergence of control, wave activity in the brain, local vs global brain activity, and much more. Episode Transcript Attention and Mental Control, by Carolyn Dicey Jennings "I Attend, Therefore I Am," by Carolyn Dicey Jennings (Aeon Magazine) More Videos and Papers The Emergence of Everything: How the World Became Complex, by Harold J. MorowitzCarolyn Dicey Jennings explores whether it is possible for us to direct our own minds through attention and, if so, what impact this has on other functions of the mind. She has training in philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience and combines these fields to approach fundamental questions about the nature of the mind, including the existence of the self, the foundation of consciousness, and the possibility of a free will. She has published three books, two monographs with Cambridge University Press (The Attending Mind, 2020 and Attention and Mental Control, 2022) and an edited volume (Mind, Cognition, and Neuroscience: A Philosophical Introduction, 2022 with Ben Young). She is currently working on a new project, on “collective attention,” which intersects with recent digital technologies.
Jim talks with lawyer and former DHS policy person Rachel Winkler about Trump's promise to carry out a large-scale deportation operation. They discuss estimates of undocumented immigrants in the U.S., mixed-status households & the aging undocumented population, the legal standing of an undocumented immigrant, types of undocumented immigrants, the process for pending deportation orders, potential policy changes, prosecutorial discretion, practical constraints on mass deportations, private detention companies, cooperation with Mexico, the Alien Enemies Act & the Insurrection Act, balancing secure borders with the need for immigrants, and much more. Episode TranscriptRachel Winkler is a member of the Cross-Border Risks team. Utilizing experience working with federal law enforcement partners and professionals at DHS, Rachel’s practice focuses on U.S. immigration benefits, compliance, and status defense; visa sponsorship and eligibility; removal defense; forced labor supply chain compliance with Section 307; and international criminal investigations. She also handles customs and I-9 verification issues. Her clients include individuals (including those with white-collar convictions), entities, and startups across various industries including tech and entertainment.
Jim talks with historian Richard Overy about his new book Why War? They discuss historians' shyness in thinking about the nature of war, a correspondence between Einstein & Freud, the meaning of the term, the "pacified past," the interplay between warfare & cooperation, recent ethological studies of chimpanzees, conformity, 4 major types of anthropological evidence, the status of warriors over time, ecological drivers of war, Marxian analyses of war, hubristic warfare, Rome's centuries of warfare, the illusion of security, the future of war, and much more. Episode Transcript Why War?, by Richard OveryRichard Overy is Honorary Research Professor in the University of Exeter. He spent his teaching career at Cambridge, King's College London, and Exeter. He is the author of more than 30 books on World War II, air power, and the European dictators, including Why the Allies Won, Russia's War, The Air War 1939-1945, and most recently Blood and Ruins: The Last Imperial War 1931-1945, which won the Duke of Wellington Medal for Military History and the Society for Military History's Distinguished Book Award for 2023. His next book, Rain of Ruin, on the bombing of Japan is due out in March 2025. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He lives between Italy and England.
Jim talks with Gregg Henriques about his new book UTOK: The Unified Theory of Knowledge. They discuss the problem the book addresses, 3 vectors of knowing, the metacrisis, avoiding despair & techno-optimism, the enlightenment gap, the iQuad coin, the UTOK garden frame, a descriptive metaphysics for science, behavior & mind, endo-naturalism, 3 kinds of mindedness, webs of justification, the periodic table of behaviors, behavioral investment theory, the influence matrix, the tree of life, why wisdom is the ultimate virtue, the concept of God, the dragon's lair, the fifth joint point, the third attractor, personal information agents, the garden fractal, a transcendent naturalism, and much more. Episode Transcript Gregg's blog at Psychology Today UTOKing with Gregg (Podcast) JRS EP 176 - Gregg Henriques Part 1: Addressing the Enlightenment Gap JRS EP 59 - Gregg Henriques on Unifying Psychology The Emergence of Everything: How the World Became Complex, by Harold J. Morowitz JRS EP 266 - Marcia Gralha on the Common Core of Psychotherapy and Wokeism in Academia "In Search of the 5th Attractor," by Jim Rutt JRS EP 57 - Zak Stein on Education in a Time Between Worlds First Principles and First Values: Forty-Two Propositions on CosmoErotic Humanism, the Meta-Crisis, and the World to Come, by David J. TempleDr. Gregg Henriques is a Professor of Graduate Psychology at James Madison University, where he has worked since 2003. He is a clinical and theoretical psychologist, and founder of UTOK, the Unified Theory of Knowledge, which is a new system of thought that bridges the sciences and humanities into a coherent whole. Dr. Henriques has authored three books, UTOK: The Unified Theory of Knowledge (2024), A New Synthesis for Solving the Problem of Psychology: Addressing the Enlightenment Gap (2022), and A New Unified Theory of Psychology (2011). He has published many professional papers in the field’s top journals, and has a popular blog on Psychology Today, called Theory of Knowledge, which has almost 500 essays and received over 10 million views. Dr. Henriques is a fellow of the American Psychological Association, the 2022 President of the Society for the Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration, and head of the UTOK Circle. He teaches classes in psychotherapy, personality, personality assessment, cognitive psychology, and social psychology. He received his PhD in Clinical Psychology at the University of Vermont, did his postdoctoral training under Aaron T. Beck at the University of Pennsylvania, and is a licensed clinical psychologist in Virginia.
Jim talks with Loribeth Ford Jarrell, the director of Sumplicity Math, a mathematics enrichment program for children. They discuss working with the neural characteristics & firing patterns of individual children, education going modular, the microschool movement vs supplementary education, tutorial services, individual assessment, 10 vector dials, Jim's education in proving the teacher wrong, identifying Jim's learning profile, why education should belong to the child, the 10-frame dot model, dumb approaches in basic math education, long consolidators, phases of learning, the one-room schoolhouse model, types of readers, the neurological paths of reading, cognitive advantages of Arabic numerals, the nastiness of long division, how to deliver a bespoke learning trajectory, de-professionalizing math education, demonstrating that math is beautiful, counter-movements in education, supporting parents, and much more. Episode Transcript Sumplicity MathLoribeth Ford Jarrell, director of Sumplicity Math, President of Jarrell Academics, is an innovative educator who has built a lab school/lab program comprising a new model of Education Service Delivery based on the neural characteristics and firing patterns of individual children. Her work covers all aspects of bespoke education service delivery from understanding the behavioral and cognitive development needs of children on the Spectrum, to typically developing peers, to the advanced needs of the highest achieving children.
Jim talks with Lorraine Besser about the ideas in her book The Art of the Interesting: What We Miss in the Pursuit of the Good Life and How to Cultivate It. They discuss the turning point in Lorraine's life that inspired the book, the meaning of the good life, pleasure vs eudaimonia, Stoicism & Epicureanism, unstructured cognitive engagement, the interesting, Seinfeld's relationship to happiness, problems with the pursuit of pleasure & meaning, the arrival fallacy, saints vs human beings, psychological richness, pursuit mode, Neal Cassady of the Beats, high dimensionality, the show Somebody Somewhere, tips for developing an interesting mindset, how much to go into the danger zone, the value of friendship, interesting vs moral, and much more. Episode Transcript The Art of the Interesting: What We Miss in the Pursuit of the Good Life and How to Cultivate It, by Lorraine Besser JRS EP 130 - Ken Stanley on Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned Visions of Cody, by Jack Kerouac The First Third, by Neal Cassady JRS EP 269 - Alex Ebert on the War on Genius The Eudaimonic Ethics: The Philosophy and Psychology of Living Well, by Lorraine BesserLorraine Besser, PhD, is a professor of philosophy at Middlebury College, who specializes in the philosophy and psychology of the good life and teaches popular courses for undergraduates on happiness, well-being, and ethics. An internationally recognized scholar, she was a founding investigator on the research team studying psychological richness. She is the author of two academic books (The Philosophy of Happiness: An Interdisciplinary Introduction and Eudaimonic Ethics: The Philosophy and Psychology of Living Well) and dozens of professional journal articles on moral psychology.
Jim talks with Nancy Jacobson, the founder and CEO of the No Labels political organization, in the last of four conversations featuring non-partisan thinkers on the upcoming US presidential election. They discuss No Labels's mission, the Problem Solvers Caucus, the common sense platform, the quality of No Labels volunteers, the power of party leaders, issues with the current parties, Nancy's vote for the 2024 election, what's next for No Labels, and more. Episode Transcript "The Republican Electoral College Advantage," by Jim Rutt No Labels - Books and Reform Proposals JRS EP 219 - Katherine Gehl on Breaking Partisan Gridlock The Politics Industry: How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save Our Democracy, by Katherine Gehl and Michael Porter JRS EP 262 - Cliff Maloney on a Libertarian's Case for TrumpNancy Jacobson is the Founder and CEO of No Labels, a non-profit political organization in Washington D.C. that uses bi-partisan approaches to bring people together to solve today’s toughest political problems. She previously held senior roles on political campaigns for President Bill Clinton, Senator Al Gore, and Senator Evan Bayh.
Jim talks with Alex Ebert about his recent essay "Suboptimal Revolution: In Defense of Inefficiencies." They discuss what optimization does, genius vs democracy, negating the spatiotemporal experience of becoming a master, the decision-by-committee problem, intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation, dimensional collapse, the app Shazam, what happened to movies, preferred energetic states & the feat of problematizing, status burning, audience capture, the signature of a medium, the human ability to spot good bad things, cognitive sovereignty, the allure of inertia, fighting back against entropy, a million years to do cool stuff in the universe, suboptimal tech, constraints, natural implicit hierarchies, tying effort to sovereignty, and much more. Episode Transcript Bad Guru (Substack) "Suboptimal Revolution," by Alex EbertAlex Ebert is a platinum-selling musician (Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros), Golden Globe-winning film composer, cultural critic and philosopher living in New Orleans. His philosophical project, FreQ Theory, as well as his cultural analyses, can be followed on his Substack.
Jim talks with Brendan Graham Dempsey about the ideas in his new book, The Evolution of Meaning: A Universal Learning Process. They discuss Jim's love for the book, the thinking behind the title, future books in the series, why Brendan avoided the word "religion," the nature of meaning, dissipative systems, Shannon information vs semantic information, relations vs static objects, meaning as adaptive information, the meaning of value, Gregg Henriques's Unified Theory of Knowledge, the meaning of learning, why the world is full of bogus learning, whether complexity increases over time, information overload, John Vervaeke's relevance realization, wisdom, evolution as learning, the meaning & evolution of sacredness, and much more. Episode Transcript The Evolution of Meaning: A Universal Learning Process, by Brendan Graham Dempsey JRS EP 172 - Brendan Graham Dempsey on Emergentism JRS EP 176 - Gregg Henriques Part 1: Addressing the Enlightenment Gap UTOK: The Unified Theory of Knowledge, by Gregg Henriques JRS EP 159 - Bobby Azarian on the Romance of Reality JRS EP 143 - John Vervaeke Part 1: Awakening from the Meaning CrisisBrendan Graham Dempsey is a writer, researcher, organic farmer, and the director of Sky Meadow Institute, an organization dedicated to "promoting systems-based thinking about the things that matter most." He graduated summa cum laude with a BA in religious studies and classical civilizations from the University of Vermont and earned his master's from Yale University, where he studied religion and culture. He is the author of Metamodernism: Or, The Cultural Logic of Cultural Logics and host of the Metamodern Spirituality Podcast. His primary interests include theorizing developments in culture after postmodernism, productively bridging the divide between science and spirituality, and developing sustainable systems for life to flourish. All of these lead through the paradigms of emergence and complexity, which inform all of his work.
Jim talks with Richard Hanania in the third of four interviews with heterodox political thinkers on the upcoming US presidential election. They discuss the danger of "heterodox orthodoxy," Trump's election denial, disagreeing with the Democrats on policy, Jim's critiques of both parties, religion's impact on policy, Republicans as the party of low human capital, the idea of Trump derangement syndrome, the number of people who served under Trump who are not supporting him, guardrails against overthrowing the election, the likelihood that Trump wins, the apparent swing toward Trump among young men, and much more. Episode Transcript Richard Hanania's NewsletterRichard Hanania is a Fellow at the Salem Center for Public Policy at the University of Texas, and a former Research Fellow at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University. He holds a JD from the University of Chicago Law School and a PhD in Political Science from UCLA. His research interests include the relationship between wokeness and civil rights law, psychological differences between liberals and conservatives, and how to improve public discourse and policymaking by holding experts accountable through prediction markets. He has written in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post.
Jim talks with Marcia Gralha about her and Gregg Henriques's work identifying the common core of psychotherapeutic traditions. They discuss her collaboration with & recent engagement to Gregg, framing psychotherapy, the enlightenment gap, the development of eclecticism, common factors between approaches, the integration movement, approaches to integration, the 3(+1) elements of the Common Core, the quality of the therapeutic bond, cultural legitimization, choosing interventions, rituals, the Unified Theory of Knowledge (UTOK), disentangling confusions in terms, the persona filter, person-centered therapy, the neurotic loop, character adaptation systems, cognitive therapy & cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), wokeism in academia, a sexual harassment complaint, woke 1.0 vs 2.0, the ability to deal with strong stuff, and much more. Episode Transcript Inside UTOK (Substack) JRS EP59 - Gregg Henriques on Unifying Psychology JRS EP176 - Gregg Henriques Part 1: Addressing the Enlightenment Gap "The Common Core of Psychotherapy," by Gregg Henriques and Marcia Gralha "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" by Thomas NagelMarcia Gralha is an independent scholar of the Unified Theory of Knowledge (UTOK) and serves as a content and community curator for the theory. She holds an M.A. in Clinical Psychology from Western Carolina University, North Carolina, and a B.A. in Psychology from the University of South Florida, St. Petersburg, FL. Marcia has contributed to the development of various UTOK initiatives, including the Annual Conference "Consilience," publications, lectures, workshops, and coaching services. She is also the co-founder of the Nexus project, an initiative dedicated to fostering unification and integrative approaches to psychology in Brazil.
Jim talks with Aravind Srinivas, co-founder and CEO of the AI-powered search engine Perplexity. They discuss Jim's use of Perplexity, its wide range of use cases, why Google search is limited by fear of mistakes, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), citations, coming up with the idea, leveraging existing tools vs inventing everything, the core product experience, how the orchestration engine works, semantic vector databases, testing Perplexity as a hedge fund strategist, the Perplexity API, Perplexity's moat, maintaining cognitive sovereignty, paid tiers, what the company needs to succeed, having individuals as major investors, debunking rumors of acquisition by NVIDIA, affordances for coders, and much more. Episode Transcript PerplexityAravind Srinivas is the CEO of Perplexity, the conversational "answer engine" that provides precise, user-focused answers to queries — with in-line citations. Aravind co-founded the company in 2022 after working as a research scientist at OpenAI, Google, and DeepMind. To date, Perplexity has raised over $165 million from investors including Jeff Bezos, Nat Friedman, Elad Gil, NVIDIA, and the late Susan Wojciki. He has a PhD in computer science from UC Berkeley and a Bachelors and Masters in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.
Jim talks with Bret Weinstein in the second of four episodes featuring heterodox political thinkers on the 2024 presidential election. They discuss Bret's historical voting principles & why they don't apply this time, election interference, what actually happened with Biden's failed debate, current polling & apparent desperation of the Democrats, the long trajectory of feminism & its relationship to the current Democratic party, defections by men, a massive political realignment, hating both teams, voting against the status quo regime, the demographic shift in party alignment, a bias in courage towards religious worldviews, removal from the World Health Organization, understanding the failure of government institutions in Covid, Ukraine aid as a looting mechanism, global warming & solar forcing, the Carrington effect & the migration of Earth's magnetic poles, Trump's narcissism & its effects on decision-making, defeating the duopoly, deliberating until the last minute, and much more. Episode TranscriptBret Weinstein has spent two decades advancing the field of evolutionary biology, earning his PhD at the University of Michigan, before teaching at The Evergreen State College for 14 years. He is currently working to uncover the evolutionary meaning of large-scale patterns in human history, and seeking a game-theoretically stable path forward for humanity, in service of which he has just co-organized the Rescue the Republic rally in Washington, DC. Bret has spoken at venues including the U.S. Congress, the International Covid Summit, Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson, and the Hannah Arendt Center. With his wife, Heather Heying, he hosts the DarkHorse podcast and co-authored the NYT bestseller A Hunter-Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century: Evolution and the Challenges of Modern Life.
Jim talks with Evan McMullen about the state of self-driving car technology, with a special focus on simulators. They discuss the purpose of simulators, levels of simulation, how the world is modeled, gradually ramping up the complexity of the testing world, Tesla's approach, hardware-in-the-loop testing, Waymo's first-mover advantage, simulating the availability of a human intervener, driverless solutions vs driver aid, simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), the question of which theories of ethics to use, international standards for functional safety, a liability shield equilibrium, tool-sharing between companies, open source simulators, NVIDIA's DRIVE Sim & other players, standards for interoperability, incentives for cooperation between companies, hardware accuracy, edge case generation, evaluating current offerings for consumers, vibrational tactile feedback vs heads-up displays, when we'll be able to read a book in self-driving car, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS EP 94 - Shahin Farshchi on Self-Driving Tech JRS EP 124 - Jim Hackett on Ford, Electric Cars & More JRS EP 221 - George Hotz on Open-Source Driving AssistanceEvan McMullen is a mechatronics engineer at dSPACE, a leading provider of hardware and software for simulation tools into the auto industry.
Jim talks with Cliff Maloney about the November election and his get-out-the-vote campaign, The Pennsylvania Chase. They discuss Cliff's libertarian background, why Pennsylvania is a crucial state, a Republican return to grassroots, the structure of the operation, the effectiveness of door-knocking, choosing the highest-impact doors to knock on, why Cliff is helping the Republicans, Jim's political trajectory, oikophobia, why Jim finds Trump intolerable, Cliff's political background, working for Ron Paul, the loss of the anti-war left, Trump's gut instinct, Trump's deficit record, comparing the foreign policy of Nikki Haley & John McCain, hurricane relief & Ukraine relief, whether support for Ukraine is a good investment, the drug war, returning abortion rights to the states, transgender surgeries for kids, luxury beliefs, Christian nationalism in the Republican Party, woke ideology vs the nuclear family, the unsustainability of American public education, teacher's unions, politics as the adjudication of power, the importance of open disagreements, Thomas Massie, and much more. Episode Transcript Get Out the Vote, by Donald Green and Alan Gerber "Dividend Money: An Alternative to Central Banker Managed Fractional Reserve Banking Money," by Jim Rutt (YouTube)Cliff Maloney is a United States political strategist and commentator. He is nationally known for launching the grassroots program “Operation Win at the Door,” which has now knocked on over 3 million doors and elected 300+ state legislators. His life’s mission is to create a liberty state by targeting the 5,413 state legislative seats in America to elect principled citizen legislators.
Jim talks with Nikos Salingaros about architectural theory, urbanism, and urban planning. They discuss inherited knowledge, the capability to distinguish between ugly & beautiful buildings, John Vervaeke's 4 kinds of knowing, vertical vs horizontal design, how architecture went so wrong, backward evolution, a Messianic futurism cult, the destruction of living geometry, how the real estate racket works, biophilic design, the correlation between modern architecture & modern art, the human scale, James Gibson, the Fibonacci sequence, deconstructivism, architectural assassins, fractals in architecture, richness, interpretability, medical health, functional ornamentation, information overload, cultural continuity & erasure, the ruse of postmodernism, algorithmic design, the AI revolution in architecture, an opportunity for new entrants, wonderful modern buildings, failed typologies, urban planning, making several systems work together simultaneously, autopoietic systems, urban DNA, Jane Jacobs, the city as a living system, post-war zoning, peer-to-peer urbanism, why it hasn't worked, the "yes in my backyard" movement, the future of architecture, and much more. Episode Transcript A Pattern Language, by Christopher Alexander JRS EP 227 - Stuart Kauffman on the Emergence of Life The Death and Life of American Cities, by Jane Jacobs How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built, by Stewart Brand "P2P Urbanism," by Nikos Salingaros “Form, Language, Complexity: Unified Architectural Theory” - Syllabus and Course VideosDr. Nikos A. Salingaros is Professor of Mathematics and Architecture at the University of Texas at San Antonio. An internationally recognized Architectural Theorist and Urbanist, his publications include seven books on architecture and design, two of them co-authored with Michael Mehaffy. Salingaros collaborated with the visionary architect and software pioneer Christopher Alexander over more than twenty years in editing Alexander’s monumental four-volume book The Nature of Order. Salingaros won the 2019 Stockholm Cultural Award for Architecture, and shared the 2018 Clem Labine Traditional Building Award with Michael Mehaffy. Salingaros holds a doctorate in Mathematical Physics from Stony Brook University, New York. He has directed and advised twenty-five Masters and PhD theses in architecture and urbanism.
Jim talks with Trent McConaghy and Ben Goertzel about the merger of Ben's SingularityNET AGIX token, Trent's Ocean Protocol, and Fetch. They discuss the relative size of the merger, motivations for pulling together the three networks, distinguishing this from a standard corporate merger, how the communities of the projects reacted, leveraging the benefits of scale, changing the ticker symbol, defining AGI vs ASI, forecasts on AGI, considering the arc of self-driving cars, data bottlenecks, the likely shape of superintelligence, what the 3 organizations do, autonomous economic agents, AI creativity, the amount of work happening on crypto networks, the antifragility of crypto, why AGI/ASI emerging from these networks might be plausible, making something work without understanding it, and much more. JRS EP217 Ben Goertzel on a New Framework for AGI JRS EP211 Ben Goertzel on Generative AI vs. AGI Currents 072: Ben Goertzel on Viable Paths to True AGI JRS EP3 Dr. Ben Goertzel – OpenCog, AGI and SingularityNET JRS EP 22 Trent McConaghy on AI & Brain-Computer Interface Accelerationism (bci/acc) "Is It Worth Being Wise?" by Paul Graham "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data," Google ResearchDr. Ben Goertzel is a cross-disciplinary scientist, entrepreneur and author. Born in Brazil to American parents, in 2020 after a long stretch living in Hong Kong he relocated his primary base of operations to a rural island near Seattle. He leads the SingularityNET Foundation, the OpenCog Foundation, and the AGI Society which runs the annual Artificial General Intelligence conference. Dr. Goertzel’s research work encompasses multiple areas including artificial general intelligence, natural language processing, cognitive science, machine learning, computational finance, bioinformatics, virtual worlds, gaming, parapsychology, theoretical physics and more.Trent McConaghy is founder of Ocean Protocol. He has 25 years of deep tech experience with a focus on AI and blockchain. He co-founded Analog Design automation Inc. in 1999, which built AI-powered tools for creative circuit design. It was acquired by Synopsys in 2004. He co-founded Solido Design Automation in 2004, using AI to mitigate process variation and help drive Moore’s Law. Solido was later acquired by Siemens. He then went on to launch ascribe in 2013 for NFTs on Bitcoin, then Ocean Protocol in 2017 for decentralized data markets for AI. He currently focuses on Ocean Predictoor for crowd-sourced AI prediction feeds.
Jim talks with Toufi Saliba about the Toda/IP protocol and HyperCycle, a decentralized network for AI-to-AI communication. They discuss the high-level view of Toda/IP & HyperCycle, enabling communication of value, what Toda adds on top of UDP, time & cost constraints, cryptographic proof in the first handshake, how Toda transfers value in very small quantities, how settlement occurs, who has custody of a dollar, transaction machines, where money is kept & what prevents stealing, an actual non-fungible token, fully decentralized smart contracts, whether or not Toda is analogous to paper money in a gold standard world, Toufi's motivation for building this tech, hyperinflation in Germany in the 1920s, the currency for AI, OpenCog's AGI ASI project, why inter-operation with AI is important, wealth creation at the node level, a market in results not compute, how this helps facilitate AGI, the entire world reaching AGI vs a single entity reaching it, why Toufi thinks AGI is close, reasons for thinking decentralized AGI will happen first, how to get involved, the cost of a node, using Moloch's incentives to overthrow Moloch, learning how to run nodes, HyperCycle vs SinguarityNET, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS Currents 027: Charles Hoskinson on Cardano Blockchain Project JRS EP217 - Ben Goertzel on a New Framework for AGIToufi Saliba is the co-author of the Toda/IP protocol and currently serves as the global chair for international protocols for AI security for the IEEE, which is the world's largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of all humanity. Toufi has a history of building various AI projects centered around cryptography and cybersecurity. In October 2022, he took on the leadership of Hypercycle.ai, which is focused on developing a general-purpose technology supporting a decentralized network for AI-to-AI communication.
Jim talks with Stephen Webb about his book If the Universe Is Teeming With Aliens... Where Is Everybody?: Seventy-Five Solutions to the Fermi Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life. They discuss Jim's obsession with the Fermi paradox, the meaning of the Fermi paradox, the Drake equation, discounting claims about UFOs, a question that everyone can contribute to, Perplexity AI's estimates, optimistic scenarios, anthropic principles, Kardashev civilizations, the principle of mediocrity, getting to the bottom of the UAP phenomenon, problems with the zoo scenario & the interdict hypothesis, the simulation hypothesis, Oumuamua, solar chauvinists, Stapledonian thinking, the signaling problem, 3 types of communications, the dark forest scenario, Dyson swarms, types of planets that would make space exploration hard, what might be special about Earth, the idea that Earth was deliberately seeded by aliens, the Great Filter idea & potential causes of extinction, the Carrington Event, previous filters, the co-evolution of tools & intelligence, where Stephen would place his bets, humanity's huge moral responsibility, and much more. Episode Transcript If the Universe Is Teeming With Aliens... Where Is Everybody?: Seventy-Five Solutions to the Fermi Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life, by Stephen Webb JRS EP14 - Astrophysicist Jill Tarter on SETI and TechnosignaturesStephen Webb has a passion for learning why the world is the way it is and asking whether it could be any different. He worked at several UK universities, being elected a Member of the Institute of Physics, Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and was project lead for the UK Advance HE Collaborative Award in Teaching Excellence in 2022. He is also active in science outreach, and his TED Talk “Where are all the aliens?” has been viewed more than 6.5 million times. In 2023, he retired to devote more time to his writing. He has published numerous books, including an undergraduate textbook on distance determination in astronomy as well as several general and popular science books. His best-known book is Where is Everybody?, an exploration of the Fermi paradox.
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 StarkMalcolm 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."
Jim talks with Glenn Loury about his recent memoir, Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative. They discuss the problem of self-regard, Glenn's mentorship under Thomas Schelling, his upbringing in the South Side of Chicago, his matriarch aunt Eloise, his best friend Woody, the one-drop rule, the social construction of race, the influence of his uncles, stealing a car for prom, the Illinois Institute of Technology, working at a printing plant, community college classes, discovering the life of the mind at Northwestern University, choosing MIT, macro- & microeconomics, separating from his wife, choosing a department to work in, getting the call from Harvard, walking the line between Economics & African-American Studies, modeling inequality in society, moving out of economic theory & into public intellectualism, "little essays," leading a double life, a torrid love affair ending in arraignment, being conservative, resisting the mournful recitation of historic victimization, a crack-cocaine addiction, resubmitting to the Christian faith, restoring his marriage, his wife's forgiveness, the arc of his political life, and much more. Episode Transcript Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative, by Glenn C. Loury The Glenn ShowGlenn C. Loury is Merton P. Stoltz Professor of Economics at Brown University. He holds the B.A. in Mathematics (Northwestern) and the Ph.D. in Economics (M.I.T). As an economic theorist he has published widely and lectured throughout the world on his research. He is also among America’s leading critics writing on racial inequality. He has been elected as a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economics Association, as a Member of the American Philosophical Society and of the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, and as a Fellow of the Econometric Society and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Jordan Hall tries to convince Jim that the reality of the Christian God is logically necessary. They discuss points of agreement & resonance between their views, relational ontology vs substance ontology, belief as mental operation vs existential commitment, a hierarchical stack of concepts, the complexity lens, the conceptual level on which relationship belongs, relata as contained within relationship, relationship as the most real, the impossibility of imagining being without relationship, oneness & multiplicity & relationality, moving from the philosophical to the theological, hypostasis, the standard model of physics, the coordination of experience with theory, dehumanizing the persons of the Trinity, alternatives to a single universe, unfolding within lawfulness, pure nominalism, the Nicene Creed, whether the Trinity adds information to complexity, whether a cosmic consciousness defies physics, the laws of causation, theology as the discipline of reality, the existential commitment that belief constitutes, fath as livingness, the meaning of a personal God, an ongoing expansion of the relationship with reality, faith vs ideology, 3 forms of belief in Plato, the meaning of pistis, John Vervaeke's religion that is not a religion, refounding life on pistis, whether one can be a Christian without thinking so, Biblical literalism, the prescriptive & annoying stuff, good fiction, great literature as a means of accessing high-dimensional reality, the mediocrity of academic Biblical criticism, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS EP8 - Jordan "Greenhall" Hall and Game B JRS EP26 - Jordan Hall on the Game B Emergence JRS EP 170 - John Vervaeke and Jordan Hall on The Religion That Is Not a Religion JRS EP 223 - Jordan Hall on Cities, Civiums, and Becoming Christian Heidegger, Neoplatonism, and the History of Being: Relation as Ontological Ground, by James Filler JRS Currents 100: Sara Walker and Lee Cronin on Time as an Object JRS EP 240 - Stuart Kauffman on a New Approach to CosmologyJordan Hall is the Co-founder and Executive Chairman of the Neurohacker Collective. He is now in his 17th year of building disruptive technology companies. Jordan’s interests in comics, science fiction, computers, and way too much TV led to a deep dive into contemporary philosophy (particularly the works of Gilles Deleuze and Manuel DeLanda), artificial intelligence and complex systems science, and then, as the Internet was exploding into the world, a few years at Harvard Law School where he spent time with Larry Lessig, Jonathan Zittrain and Cornel West examining the coevolution of human civilization and technology.
Jim talks with John Robb about the ideas in his recent Substack essay, "What Went Wrong With America?" They discuss why there's a need to address what went wrong, tribal conspiracy theories following the Trump assassination, a breakdown in collective sense-making, cohesion, coherence, legitimacy, OODA loops, the importance of orientation, reorienting after career retirement, America's choice to orient on globalism, open borders, the end of America's tribal narrative, Pat Buchanan, the Ross Perot 1992 presidential campaign, how the global orientation shaped the response to 9/11, the current global economic situation, the U.S.'s dependence on sanctions, drone warfare, likely scenarios if China invades Taiwan, prospects for flipping back to a national orientation, improving collective sense-making, the current anti-immigration protests in Europe, and much more. Episode Transcript Global Guerrillas (Substack) JRS EP 247 - Sergey Kuprienko on Drone Warfare in UkraineJohn Robb is an author, inventor, entrepreneur, technology analyst, astro engineer, and military pilot. He’s started numerous successful technology companies, including one in the financial sector that sold for $295 million and one that pioneered the software we currently see in use at Facebook and Twitter. John’s insight on technology and governance has appeared on the BBC, Fox News, National Public Radio, CNBC, The Economist, the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and BusinessWeek. John served as a pilot in a tier-one counter-terrorism unit that worked alongside Delta and Seal Team 6. He wrote the book Brave New War on the future of national security, and has advised the Joint Chiefs of Staff, NSA, DoD, CIA, and the House Armed Services Committee.
Jim talks with Alexander Bard in the last of three conversations about his and Jan Söderqvist’s recent book Process and Event. They discuss the barred absolute as that which is hidden to us in the world, the barred subject, the mamilla in Lacan, barred absolutes vs the Barred Absolute, dissolving nihilism, accepting death as absolute, trans-determinism, Grand Project A, exodology, paradigmatics, the tyrant's lynch mob, oikophobia, Trumpism as a reaction to oikophobia, attentionalism, the abolition of advertising, consumtariats vs netocrats, the attentionalist paradigm, personal information agents, curators, comparing advertising & slavery, Perplexity, the Messiah Machine, protopianism, metastability, imploitation over exploitation, the necessity of growth, the Ecotopian Garden, the Syntheist Temple, the phallic gaze as the most important driver of motivation, the demographic crisis, bio-feminism, the Great Exodus, bringing life to space, parallel intelligences, inventing an alien civilization, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS EP 163 - Benedict Beckeld on Western Self-Contempt Perplexity JRS Currents 010: Tyson Yunkaporta on Humans As Custodial SpeciesAlexander Bard is a philosopher, artist, songwriter and music producer, author of six books with Jan Söderqvist, living in Stockholm, Sweden. Bard built his career as a philosopher in parallel with a highly successful 25-years-plus career in the international music industry. Bard & Söderqvist’s philosophy concentrates on the relationship between human beings and technology, using human beings as the constant throughout civilization, with technology as the ever faster changing variable. Their work takes inspiration from thinkers like Hegel, Nietzsche, Whitehead, Deleuze, and Eastern philosophy and spirituality, in the latter case adding Persia to the well known triad of India, China and Japan. They are convinced philosophy will be the last human activity to ever be affected by AI.
Jim talks with Alexander Bard in the second of three conversations about his and Jan Söderqvist's recent book Process and Event. They discuss eventological monotheism vs nomadological iconology, dualism vs monism, substance dualism, Spinoza's monism, graded relationality, emergence vector theory, Syntheism & its concepts, God as the ultimate dream, creating God, 4 dimensions of time, a more complete metaphysics, the problem with oneness, the two-headed phallus, priests & chiefs, the 3 fundamental entities in Hinduism, a congress of grandmothers, Plato & Confucius's idealization of tyrants, libido & mortido, objectification of the mamilla, Julia Kristeva's discovery, the Gnostic delusion, being embodied and en-minded, examples of boy pharaohs & pillar saints, paradigmatics, membranics, archetypology, the geneplex vs the memeplex, 4 paradigms in human history, finding one's paradigmatic role, embedded membranes, trans men & women as new paradigmatic categories, the dialectics of the Hegelian negation & the Nietzschean oscillation, the negation of the negation in identity production, negation in phenomenology, the golden age of 19th century German philosophy, American pragmatists, transcendental emergentism, getting laid, principles rather than laws, studying each emergence vector as its own domain, emergence vector theory in creativity, the stability of physics, cosmological Darwinism, negation & oscillation as the fundamental dialectics of reality & thought, and much more. Episode Transcript "The Last Question," by Isaac Asimov Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, by Julia Kristeva JRS EP 176 - Gregg Henriques Part 1: Addressing the Enlightenment Gap JRS EP 138 - W. Brian Arthur on the Nature of Technology JRS EP 227 - Stuart Kauffman on the Emergence of Life JRS EP 5 Lee Smollin - Quantum Foundations and Einstein's Unfinished RevolutionAlexander Bard is a philosopher, artist, songwriter and music producer, author of six books with Jan Söderqvist, living in Stockholm, Sweden. Bard built his career as a philosopher in parallel with a highly successful 25-years-plus career in the international music industry. Bard & Söderqvist’s philosophy concentrates on the relationship between human beings and technology, using human beings as the constant throughout civilization, with technology as the ever faster changing variable. Their work takes inspiration from thinkers like Hegel, Nietzsche, Whitehead, Deleuze, and Eastern philosophy and spirituality, in the latter case adding Persia to the well known triad of India, China and Japan. They are convinced philosophy will be the last human activity to ever be affected by AI.
Jim talks with Pamela Denise Long about the nomination of Kamala Harris and what it might mean for American Freedmen. They discuss the meaning & value of the term "Freedmen," what it means to be Black & why it matters, misallocated affirmative action, Barack Obama's ethnicity, the history of Bantu & Nilotic Africans, Kamala Harris as a metaphor, parallels between Harris & Obama, the question of Harris's Blackness, Harris's decision to identify as Black, the influence on public policy, her statements about reparation, her hesitance to commit to direct redress for Freedmen, the context of an increasingly multiracial America, emphasizing the question of resources, remaining tensions between Black and White Americans, when ethnic identification prevents redress to Freedmen, who Denise will vote for in the election, lineage specificity, immigration moderation, the increased number of Black Americans planning to vote, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS EP 196 - Pamela Denise Long on Affirmative Action for FreedmenDr. Pamela Denise Long is principal project manager and implementation consultant at Youthcentrix. Denise holds an EdD in organizational development, MS in Learning & Cognition, and BHS in allied health. Dr. Long is an award-winning business consultant for implementing trauma-informed diversity, equity, inclusion, and antiracism, 7th gen American, “Radical Republican,” and media personality featured at Newsweek, FOX News, WVON, The Griot Politics/Black News Channel, and more.
Jim talks with Alexander Bard for the first in a series of conversations about his and Jan Söderqvist's recent book Process and Event. They discuss Jim's process for reading the book, metaphysics, narratology, the sociont, dividuals vs individuals, a biochemical definition of individuality, eventology, Alexander's conversion to Zoroastrianism, nomadology, Nietzsche's concept of the eternal recurrence, 4 varieties of time, a defense of armchair philosophy, phallic linear time, the phallic gaze & direction, transcendental emergentism, the tendency to want a single explanation, problems with emergentism, emergence vectors, the ubiquity of uniqueness, the Great Filter, the narratological triad, 3 brains & their proportions in the population, the problem with literal belief in mythos, root of the phallus, the end of the age of mass religion, the barred absolute & whether it's desirable, tribopoiesis, membranes & boundaries, lawful semipermeability, membranics as a dialectical process, tantric labs, coherent pluralism & Zoroastrianism, decentralization, avoiding tyranny, disenfranchising the emergence of big men, boy pharaohs vs pillar saints, and much more. Episode Transcript Process and Event, by Alexander Bard and Jan Söderqvist JRS Currents 065: Alexander Bard on Protopian Narratology JRS EP95 - Alexander Bard on God in the Internet Age JRS Currents 100: Sara Walker and Lee Cronin on Time as an Object The Emergence of Everything: How the World Became Complex, by Harold Morowitz Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior, by Christopher BoehmAlexander Bard is a philosopher, artist, songwriter and music producer, author of six books with Jan Söderqvist, living in Stockholm, Sweden. Bard built his career as a philosopher in parallel with a highly successful 25-years-plus career in the international music industry. Bard & Söderqvist's philosophy concentrates on the relationship between human beings and technology, using human beings as the constant throughout civilization, with technology as the ever faster changing variable. Their work takes inspiration from thinkers like Hegel, Nietzsche, Whitehead, Deleuze, and Eastern philosophy and spirituality, in the latter case adding Persia to the well known triad of India, China and Japan. They are convinced philosophy will be the last human activity to ever be affected by AI.
Jim talks with Seth Lloyd about the many ways of measuring complexity. They discuss the difficulty of measuring complexity, the metabolism of bacteria, Kolmogorov complexity, Shannon entropy, Charles Bennett's logical depth, cellular automata, effective complexity & its discovery, the effective complexity of a bacterium, coarse graining, fractal dimensions, Lempel-Ziv complexity, the invention of Morse code, epsilon machines, thermodynamic depth, mutual information, integrated information as a more intricate form of mutual information, panpsychism, whether "consciousness" has a referent, network complexity, multiscale entropy, pragmatic application of complexity measures, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS EP 79 - Seth Lloyd on Our Quantum Universe The Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution, by Stuart KauffmanSeth Lloyd is professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. Dr. Lloyd's research focuses on problems on information and complexity in the universe. He was the first person to develop a realizable model for quantum computation and is working with a variety of groups to construct and operate quantum computers and quantum communication systems. Dr. Lloyd has worked to establish fundamental physical limits to precision measurement and to develop algorithms for quantum computers for pattern recognition and machine learning. He is author of over three hundred scientific papers, and of Programming the Universe (Knopf, 2004).
Jim talks with Timothy Clancy about the Israel-Hamas War following Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel. They discuss the sorting-out period that follows the end of an empire, Jerusalem as a perpetual battleground, 3 questions for understanding conflict, a missed opportunity for Jordan to take back the West Bank, what happened on October 7, recovering the sense of security, the scale of the atrocity, strategic limitations of bloodlust, unconditional surrender, grievance, pulling weeds vs addressing root grievances, the civil war between Fatah and Hamas, the story behind Yasser Arafat's rejection of the potential settlement between the Palestine Liberation Organization & Israel, ways to invade a city, the increasing likelihood of a ceasefire, the difference between conventional & asymmetric warfare, the importance of contingencies & constraints, the arms supply from the U.S. to Israel, the increase of Western support for Hamas, alignment with grievance, the role of Indian & Bangladeshi bot farms in increasing Palestine-Israel tensions, the colonial narrative, a system for analyzing grievances, Timothy's prediction for long-term trajectory, contingent factors of the rise of Iran, employment as a cure for grievance, Gaza as a feral city, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS Currents 057: Timothy Clancy on Russia's Mid-Game START Researcher Spotlight: Timothy Clancy "Dynamics of Atrocity Scripts in Conflict," by Timothy Clancy "Theory of an Emerging-State Actor: The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) Case," by Timothy ClancyTimothy Clancy is an Assistant Research Scientist at START specializing in studying wicked mess problems, including violence and instability, as complex systems. Current research topics include understanding violent radicalization as a system, the terror contagion hypothesis for public mass killings, the emerging-state actor hypothesis for asymmetric and irregular warfare conflicts, and advancing methods for modeling social complexity through computer simulations integrated with AI.
Jim talks with Sergey Kuprienko, CEO and co-founder of Swarmer, about drone warfare in the Russo-Ukrainian War. They discuss the parallels between drones in Ukraine & the advance in aviation during World War I, the history of drone warfare in the conflict, Russia's electronic countermeasures, the niche Swarmer occupies, autonomy for coordinated robots, pilots vs operators, swarm vs swarm warfare, AI vs human decision-making, greener warfare, distribution of ability among drone pilots, current production rates, the kill ratio, Russia's brute-force industrial capacity, the mix of symbolic AI vs machine learning, working with D3 Capital, collective intelligence, computing hardware, the Russian use of smoke as a countermeasure, cybersecurity, extra-military applications, and much more. JRS EP 244 - Samo Burja on Lessons from the Russo-Ukrainian War "Don't Bring a Patriot to a Drone Fight—Bring Fighter UAVs Instead," by Paul MaxwellSergey Kuprienko is the CEO and co-founder of Swarmer, a software company for drone software.
Jim and A.M. Hickman trade stories about the pleasures and tribulations of hitchhiking. They discuss Andy & his wife's recent hitchhiking honeymoon, how he started hitchhiking as a teenager, growing up in Utica, New York, the Adirondacks, multi-generational itchy-foot syndrome, "hobo college," Jim's earliest hitchhiking experience, hitchhiking on the East Coast, crazy happenings, fertilized chicken eggs, a four-year-old driver, psychoactive chemicals, a shift against hitchhiking in the Eighties, post-Covid leeriness, the decline in hitchhiking, finding odd jobs, the low cost of living on the road, Mormon country, ultra-light gear, the diversity of America's traveling homeless, sleeping in a Honda Civic on a freight train, rescuing a fourteen-year-old hitchhiker in Eureka, California, and much more. Episode Transcript Hickman's Hinterlands (Substack)A.M. Hickman is an itinerant geographer from the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains. He writes on Substack at Hickman's Hinterlands.
Jim talks with Bob Levy about the Second Amendment, the right to keep and bear arms, in the Supreme Court. They discuss Bob's late-career move to law, never being too old to reinvent yourself, how Bob got involved in a pivotal Supreme Court case in establishing the modern interpretation of the Second Amendment, the text of the Second Amendment, District of Columbia v. Heller, United States v. Miller, United States v. Emerson, the scholarship around framing the Second Amendment as an individual right, the state of play of gun control in D.C. at the time, the handgun ban, handguns in the home for self-defense, the NRA case & a rookie error by the NRA's lawyers, legal strategy in the Heller case, sufficient vs necessary conditions for exercising the right, the meaning of "well-regulated," the specific holdings in Heller, the meaning of fundamental rights, Breyer's dissent against Scalia's opinion, the rational basis standard, McDonald v. City of Chicago, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, "good moral character," the murky precedent of striking down laws that weren't present during the framing era, a strict scrutiny approach, speculations on the future of Second Amendment jurisprudence, ghost guns, and much more. Episode Transcript The Dirty Dozen: How Twelve Supreme Court Cases Radically Expanded Government and Eroded Freedom, by Robert Levy & William Mellor "The Peculiar Story of United States v. Miller," by Brian L. FryeBob Levy was, for 14 years, chairman of the board of directors at the Cato Institute. He is now chairman emeritus. Bob joined Cato as senior fellow in constitutional studies in 1997 after 25 years in business. The Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies is named in his honor. He has also served on boards of the Federalist Society, the Foundation for Government Accountability, and the Institute for Justice. Bob received his PhD in business from the American University in 1966, then founded CDA Investment Technologies, a major provider of investment information and software. At age 50, after leaving CDA in 1991, Bob went to George Mason law school, where he was chief articles editor of the law review and class valedictorian. He received his JD degree in 1994. The next two years he clerked for Judge Royce Lamberth on the US District Court and Judge Douglas Ginsburg on the US Court of Appeals, both in Washington, DC.
Jim talks with Samo Burja about lessons military strategists should take from the Russo-Ukrainian War so far. They discuss why military stockpiles are less useful than previously assumed, the scaling up of drone production, the impossibility of envisioning what tech will be needed, 4 factors that caused Russian miscalculation, offensive vs defensive dominance, the possibility of a U.S. military draft, the changing role of conscription, the high average age in Russia & Ukraine, the rapid evolution of drones, a comparison between drone pilots & snipers, the muted relevance of the air force, empty symbols of military strength, the progress of autonomous drones, the reevaluation of civilian casualties with changing tech, the information complexity of drone warfare, the importance of artillery, the need for a new George Marshall figure in the U.S., a war of production, how the Ukraine War can inform the Taiwan situation, the idea of an amphibious assault, autonomous submersible vehicles, and much more. JRS EP 243 - Yaroslav Trofimov on Ukraine’s War of Independence JRS EP 221 - George Hotz on Open-Source Driving AssistanceSamo Burja is the founder and President of Bismarck Analysis, a consulting firm that specializes in institutional analysis for clients in North America and Europe. Bismarck uses the foundational sociological research that Samo and his team have conducted over the past decade to deliver unique insights to clients about institutional design and strategy. Samo’s studies focus on the social and material technologies that provide the foundation for healthy human societies, with an eye to engineering and restoring the structures that produce functional institutions. He has authored articles and papers on his findings. His manuscript, Great Founder Theory, is available online. He is also a Research Fellow at the Long Now Foundation and Senior Research Fellow in Political Science at the Foresight Institute. Samo has spoken about his findings at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Y Combinator’s YC 120 conference, the Reboot American Innovation conference in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere. He spends most of his time in California and his native Slovenia.
Jim talks with Yaroslav Trofimov about his new book Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine's War of Independence. They discuss the reporting that went into the book, Yaroslav's connection to Ukraine, a brief history of Ukraine, the Golden Horde's conquering of modern-day Ukraine, Russia's inheritance of the Tatar-Mongol state, Ukraine's brief period of independence at the end of WWI, the complexity of Ukrainian identity, the Orange Revolution, the Maidan Revolution & its outcome, a period of low-intensity conflict, what caused full-scale war to break out, how Putin drank his own kool-aid, his expectation that there would be little resistance, the widespread underestimation of Ukraine, Russia's initial thrusts, the pivotal battle at Hostomel Airfields, the Bucha massacre, the negotiations in Istanbul, the siege at Mariupol, what made the Ukrainians so tough, the role of Zelensky in inspiring the resistance & rallying international support, the Russian drought, the counter-offensives of August-September 2022, the Republican party's stalling of aid to Ukraine, the arguments for supporting aid, Yaroslav's prognosis, possible endgames, the likelihood of a frozen conflict, and much more. Episode Transcript Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine's War of Independence, by Yaroslav Trofimov No Country for Love, by Yaroslav TrofimovYaroslav Trofimov is the author of three books of narrative non-fiction and one novel. He has worked around the world as a foreign correspondent of The Wall Street Journal since 1999, and has served as the newspaper’s chief foreign-affairs correspondent since 2018. Born in Kyiv, Ukraine, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in international reporting in 2023, for his work on Ukraine, and in 2022, for his work on Afghanistan. His honors include an Overseas Press Club award for coverage of India as well as the Washington Institute gold medal for the best book on the Middle East. His latest non-fiction book, Our Enemies Will Vanish, was a finalist of the 2024 Orwell Prize.
Jim talks with Magatte Wade about the ideas in her book The Heart of A Cheetah: How We Have Been Lied to about African Poverty, and What That Means for Human Flourishing. They discuss the origins of the book's title, the issue with aid, George Ayittey's "cheetahs vs hippos" frame, a leapfrogging strategy, Magatte's childhood in Senegal, recognizing lies about African poverty, business school in France, nine months in Columbus, Indiana, the meaning of African prosperity, criticizing by creating, creating a soft drink company around traditional African ingredients, rules & regulations of forming a business in Senegal, free enterprise in pre-colonial Africa, why fully rejecting the West is a wrong fork, special economic zones, Africa as the greatest victim of socialism, supporting African entrepreneurs, possible results of Africa's coming population boom, charter cities, special economic zones, and much more. The Heart of A Cheetah: How We Have Been Lied to about African Poverty, and What That Means for Human Flourishing, by Magatte Wade Magatte Wade (website) Africa's Bright Future (Substack)Magatte Wade is the Director of the Center for African Prosperity at Atlas Network, the leading organization of African free-market think tanks. She was listed as a Forbes “20 Youngest Power Women in Africa,” a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, and a TED Global Africa Fellow. Magatte's passion for the role of free markets in overcoming poverty and the power of enterprise to tackle social issues and promote entrepreneurial education make her a sought-after speaker and thought leader at major conferences, events, and universities around the world.
Jim talks with Tor Nørretranders about the ideas in his 1991 book The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size. They discuss the dialogue between Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein, defining consciousness, primary vs extended consciousness, the origins of the user illusion in computer interface design, the mind as an attempt to create a relevant myth, measuring the human mind in terms of information theory, consciousness as a story of reduction & compression, the physics of information, Maxwell's demon, I & me, Benjamin Libet's experiments on the delay of consciousness, being the spectator of our own acts, delayed auditory feedback, the veto theory, moving free will to the "me," Robert Sapolsky's arguments against free will, the reality of emergence, exformation, a simple translation of The Iliad, Julian Jaynes's theory of the origins of consciousness, why modern lives have less information, the problem with a subtractive approach to happiness, and much more. Episode Transcript The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size, by Tor Nørretranders JRS EP203 - Robert Sapolsky on Life Without Free Will "The Hedgehog's Song," by The Incredible String Band The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, by Julian JaynesTor Nørretranders is an independent author, thinker and speaker based in Denmark, serving an international audience. Generally seen as a leading science communicator of Denmark, Tor has involved himself in numerous activities in the public arena, from newspaper journalism through books and magazine articles to hosting and producing television shows on science and the general world view. His lecture tours, gathering tens of thousands of people, have been major events on the Scandinavian scene.
Jim talks with Stuart Kauffman about cosmology, fundamental physics, and the nature of dark matter, dark energy, and inflation. They discuss how Stuart moved into these fields, the Michelson-Morley experiment, special relativity, cosmic background radiation, the new period of precision cosmology, dark energy, why the universe is expanding faster, the Hubble tension, the baryonic Tully-Fisher relation, entanglement, nonlocality & whether it is fundamental, quantum gravity, why particle physics is collectively autocatalytic, stepping through the delay hypothesis, Planck time, the past hypothesis problem, the life ensemble, dark matter as a Ricci soliton, requirements for the rate of inflation, why cold dark matter may explain the cosmic web, Mach's principle, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS EP18 - Stuart Kauffman on Complexity, Biology & T.A.P. JRS EP 227 - Stuart Kauffman on the Emergence of Life JRS EP5 - Lee Smolin – Quantum Foundations and Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution Are Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and Inflation a Construction of Space-Time By Matter?", by Stuart Kauffman "Did the Universe Construct Itself?", by Stuart Kauffman & Stephen Guerin "On Quantum Gravity If Non-Locality Is Fundamental," by Stuart Kauffman "Dark Matter as a Ricci Soliton," by Stuart Marongwe & Stuart KauffmanStuart Alan Kauffman is an American theoretical biologist and complex systems researcher who studies the origin of life on Earth. Kauffman graduated from Dartmouth in 1960, was awarded the BA (Hons) by Oxford University (where he was a Marshall Scholar) in 1963, and completed a medical degree (MD) at the University of California, San Francisco in 1968. After completing his residency in Emergency Medicine, he moved into developmental genetics of the fruit fly, holding appointments first at the University of Chicago, then at the University of Pennsylvania, where he rose to Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics. Kauffman held a MacArthur Fellowship from 1987–1992.
Jim talks with Alex Fink about his company Otherweb, which uses AI to filter out fake news and create a more reliable news ecosystem. They discuss how Alex came to care about this problem, the decline of news media, how advertising wrecked the internet, the idea of an info agent, Otherweb's curation engine, information filtering systems, unhooking the internet from advertising, the fight between AdBlock and Facebook, the decision to disinclude paywalled websites, economic tradeoffs of paywalling, AI in movie production, money-on-money return, initial results of the printing press, watermarking images, fair witnesses, how porn has driven internet innovation, catering to the seven deadly sins, social media addiction, binding the future of the company, public benefit corporations, the stewardship capital model, the crowdfunding process, and much more. Otherweb The Other Web (Podcast)Alex Fink is a Tech Executive, Silicon Valley Expat, and the Founder and CEO of the Otherweb, a Public Benefit Corporation that uses AI to help people read news and commentary, listen to podcasts and search the web without paywalls, clickbait, ads, autoplaying videos, affiliate links, or any other junk. The Otherweb is available as an app (ios and android), a website, a newsletter, or a standalone browser extension.
Jim talks with Sam Sammane about the ideas in his new book The Singularity of Hope: Humanity's Role in an AI-Dominated Future. They discuss the hype around generative AI, obstacles to AGI, reinforcement learning, intuition & emotion, human-AI augmentation, rules of thumb, the plausibility of the brain as a quantum computer, Jim's ScriptHelper project, machine-like jobs that will likely be automated, the age of retraining, using AI to self-augment, the digital proletariat, a compassionate approach to rethinking society, a priesthood for investing, AI-augmented drug discovery, a major uplift in education, love as an engine of learning, the danger of considering AI in education as cheating, personal info agents, advances in tuning of LLMs, brain-computer interfaces, roads toward AGI, the pure AI singularity, the limits of our understanding of intelligence, collecting wisdom, and much more. Episode Transcript The Singularity of Hope: Humanity's Role in an AI-Dominated Future, by Sam Sammane Sam Sammane (website) OpenCog Foundation TheoSym JRS EP 222 - Trent McConaghy on AI & Brain-Computer Interface Accelerationism (bci/acc)Sam Sammane envisions a world in which rapid advancements in AI and technology have been harnessed for the greater good, creating a new age of global prosperity. He is a seasoned entrepreneur with multiple successful exits and an academician with a rich blend of expertise in applied physics, digital circuit design, nanotechnology, formal methods, life science, and business. Sam’s book The Singularity of Hope reflects his experiences and thoughts on the evolving relationship between AI, the economy, and the workforce.
Jim talks with Simon DeDeo about their wager concerning the likelihood of civil violence and mass killings in America in the next decade. They discuss the terms of the wager, the appropriate orders of magnitude, Alex Garland's Civil War, the American readiness to use violence, honor cultures, the movement from violence to political violence, industrial mass murder, polarization, the one-dimensionality of current elites, basins of attraction, statistical distributions of violence, Rene Girard's theory of mimetic desire, measuring political distance, the constant motion of contemporary American political views, tribalization around red-blue politics, door-holding & just-so stories, sexual signaling, the unreality of woke debates, accumulating factors that could lead to a brushfire, gun rights, the dilettantism of extremist groups, 3 specific scenarios of inciting conflicts, making sense of a post-ideological world, the question of who rules, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS EP 1 - Simon DeDeo on the Evolution of Consciousness JRS Currents 001: Simon DeDeo on University Censorship JRS Currents 028: Simon DeDeo on Explaining Explanation JRS EP 202 - Neil Howe on the Fourth Turning JRS EP 190 - Peter Turchin on Cliodynamics and End Times JRS EP 104 - Joe Henrich on WEIRD People JRS EP 230 - James Lindsay on a National Divorce JRS Currents 058: John Robb on Russia-Ukraine OutcomesSimon DeDeo is an Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University in the Department of Social and Decision Sciences, and External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. He is also affiliated with the Cognitive Science program at Indiana University, where he runs the Laboratory for Social Minds. For three years, from 2010 to 2013, he was an Omidyar Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute. He and his collaborators study how people use words and signals, and the ideas they represent, to create a world. They have studied a diverse set of systems that includes the French Revolution, the courtrooms of Victorian London, the research strategies of Charles Darwin, the insurgency of modern-day Afghanistan, the emergent bureaucracy of Wikipedia, the creation of power hierarchies among the social animals, and the collusions and conspiracies of petrol stations in the American Midwest. They combine data from the contemporary world, archives from the deep past, statistical tools from cosmology, and models of human cognition from Bayesian reasoning and information theory to understand how cultures grow, flourish, innovate, and evolve.
Jim talks with Gregg Henriques about his take on the free will versus determinism debate. They discuss the importance of definitions, the enlightenment gap, the complexity lens, why "will" is confusing & choice is a better referent, free choice vs determinism, levels of analysis, description vs explanation, freedom as description, the tree of knowledge system, ontological jumps in evolutionary complexification, a stack of emergences, systems of justification, the concept of agency, layered agency, animal decision-making, Mind2 consciousness, freedom as recursive self-awareness, the emergence of personhood, explicit self-consciousness with awareness of consequence, top-down causation, minimal elements of the debate, why Sapolsky's arguments may be dangerous, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS EP 176 - Gregg Henriques Part 1 (of 3): Addressing the Enlightenment Gap JRS Currents 009: Gregg Henriques on Theory of Meta-Cultural Transition JRS EP 59 - Gregg Henriques on Unifying Psychology JRS EP 203 - Robert Sapolsky on Life Without Free Will A New Synthesis for Solving the Problem of Psychology: Addressing the Enlightenment Gap, by Gregg Henriques JRS EP 96 - Forrest Landry on Immanent Metaphysics: Part 1 (of 3)Dr. Gregg Henriques is Professor of Graduate Psychology at James Madison University in the Combined Doctoral Program in Clinical and School Psychology. He received his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Vermont and did his post-doctoral training at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a theoretical psychologist and has developed the “Unified Theory of Knowledge,” which is a consilient scientific humanistic worldview to unify psychology. He is the author of A New Unified Theory of Psychology (Springer, 2011), and A New Synthesis for Solving the Problem of Psychology: Addressing the Enlightenment Gap (Palgrave McMillian, November 2022). His scholarly work has been published in the field’s best journals, and he has developed a popular blog on Psychology Today, Theory of Knowledge, which has received over eight million views. He is a fellow of the American Psychological Association, the 2022 President of the Society for the Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration, and founded the Theory of Knowledge academic society.
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 NozickRobin 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.
Jim talks with Richard Bartlett about the ideas in his essay "What we learned from a 3-month co-living experiment." They discuss Jim's visit to a co-living house, community & its recent decline, starting small & iterating, the co-living experiment in Andalusia, pre-registration, co-living plus events, finding the right place, the importance of landscape, the vibe, finances, membrane design, organizing transit, events, the emergent TPOT network, paying community organizers what they're worth, weaving weak links & strong links, social transitivity, curation, selection criteria, containment vs ejection, a pluralistic attitude toward respect, assuming good faith, focusing on what you want to see more of, systems for participation & coordination, the danger of oversystematizing, resentment minimization, just-in-time system design, increasing capacity for hosting, the arrival process, mastering hospitality, biasing toward small-group participation, unscheduled time, what's next, GameB finance, and much more. Episode Transcript Rich Debels (website) JRS EP51 - Richard Bartlett on Self-Organizing Collaboration "What we learned from a 3-month co-living experiment," by Richard Bartlett @visakanv on TwitterRichard Bartlett helps people grow high-trust communities and decentralised organizations. He is a co-founder of the tech co-op Loomio, the community building network Microsolidarity, and the non-hierarchical management consultancy The Hum, as well as director of the social impact collective Enspiral.
Jim talks with Robert Conan Ryan about seven ethical perspectives and why everyone should know them. They discuss why understanding ethical stances is valuable, a horseshoe spectrum, pragmatism, virtue ethics, consequentialism, deontology, elitist power, deification, social justice, stacking up ethical stances, Aristotle's golden mean, sociopaths in the military, running the polis, coherent pluralism, the multi-perspectival lens, Cornel West's positional complexity, paideia, DEI (Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion), liberal universal humanism, pragmatism vs neo-pragmatism, the long run vs the short run, the transaction cost theory of ethics, inclusive entrepreneurship, the Main Street problem, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS EP54 - Robert Conan Ryan on Boom & Bust Cycles "On making meanings: Curators, social assembly, and mashups," by Barry M. Mitnick & Robert C. Ryan The Open Society and Its Enemies, by Karl Popper Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals, by Saul Alinsky Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America, by John McWhorterRobert Conan Ryan is a professor of business administration and emerging public intellectual. His current scholarly projects include work with a diverse roster of world-leading strategists, economists, and futurists such as Jordan Hall, Michel Bauwens, Ravi Madhavan, Barry Mitnick, Matthew McCaffrey, and Michael Rectenwald. His current papers tackle competitive industry dynamics; grey market economics; the history of technology; Neo-Schumpeterian economics; artificial vs. natural cognition; paradigmatic strategic design; and, how sensemaking systems evolve and change.
Jim talks with Matthew David Segall about the ideas in his and Bruce Damer's new essay, "The Cosmological Context of the Origin of Life: Process Philosophy and the Hot Spring Hypothesis." They discuss the "philosophy as footnotes to Plato" idea, the hot springs origin of life hypothesis, closing the gap between chemistry & life, Whitehead's idea of concrescence, metaphysics in philosophy, minimum viable metaphysics, why physical law doesn't imply biological organisms, process-relational philosophy, deep-seated cosmic habits, the hero's answer, the type 1a supernova, rigorous speculation, the incalculability of the adjacent possible, the nature of matter, autocatalysis, the tension between the actual & possible, the rate of evolution, getting past the error catastrophe, Prigogine's ideas about dissipative systems, teleology & the second law of thermodynamics, why DNA is not a blueprint, the Fermi paradox, bringing the universe to life, social implications of the origin of life, panpsychism & panexperientialism, integrated information theory, why matter & energy must have an endogenous telos, prehension, life wanting to live better, necessity & openness, questioning falsifiability, and much more. Episode Transcript "The Cosmological Context of the Origin of Life: Process Philosophy and the Hot Spring Hypothesis," by Matthew David Segall & Bruce Damer Footnotes2Plato (Substack) JRS EP 167 - Bruce Damer on the Origins of Life JRS EP 171 - Bruce Damer Part 2: The Origins of Life – Implications Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, by Tom Holland JRS EP 5 - Lee Smolin – Quantum Foundations and Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution JRS EP 227 - Stuart Kauffman on the Emergence of Life JRS EP 157 - Terrence Deacon on Mind’s Emergence From Matter JRS EP 40 - Eric Smith on the Physics of Living Systems JRS EP 105 - Christof Koch on Consciousness JRS EP 178 - Anil Seth on A New Science of Consciousness JRS EP 17 - Bonnitta Roy on Process Thinking and Complexity Process Philosophy (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)Matthew David Segall, Phd, is a transdisciplinary researcher, writer, teacher, and philosopher applying process-relational thought across the natural and social sciences, as well as to the study of consciousness. He is Associate Professor in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness Department at California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, and the Chair of the Science Advisory Committee for the Cobb Institute.
Vance Crowe interviews Jim about how he maps the problem-space of current and future AI risk. They discuss the beginnings of AI, the era of broad AI, artificial general intelligence, the Wozniak test, artificial superintelligence, the paperclip maximizer problem, the timeline of AGI, FOOM, limitations of current governance structure, bad uses of narrow AI, personalized political propaganda, nanny rails, the multipolar trap, the spark of human ingenuity, Daniel Dennett's proposal to make human impersonation illegal, taking moral ownership of LLM outputs, loss of human cognitive capacity, Idiocracy, economic inequality & unemployment, David Graeber's bullshit jobs idea, Marx's concept of alienation, the flood of sludge, the idea of an AI information agent, epistemological decay, techno-hygiene tactics, GameA's self-terminating & accelerating curve, GameB, the importance of governance capacity, changing our political operating system, and much more. Episode Transcript The Vance Crowe Podcast JRS Currents 029: Vance Crowe on the "Well-Actually" Graph Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, by David GraeberVance Crowe is a communications strategist who has worked for corporations and international organizations around the world, including the World Bank, Monsanto, and the US Peace Corps. He hosts The Vance Crowe Podcast and is the founder of Legacy Interviews, where he privately records video interviews with individuals and couples to give future generations the opportunity to know their family history.
Jim talks with James Lindsay about the ideas in his recent essay "National Divorce Is National Suicide." They discuss the meaning of a national divorce (where the United States would split into two countries), different shapes it could take, the possibility of parallel experiments in civilization design, statistics on support for the idea, the proposed Belgian split, steelmanning the opposition, reducing the chances of a Civil War, the divide over gun rights & abortion, the Big Sort, why national divorce would be a disaster, how the media would frame a national divorce, bifurcation of constitutional evolution, whether we're in a historically precedented moment, the idea of an attempted silent takeover of the West, fast & slow options for red state development, malice vs incompetence, amount of immigration between the U.S. and Canada, consequences & origins of intersectionality, competence of a blue state, wokery as a religion, what we should do instead of a divorce, fighting for a more constitutionally centered society, a civic revival, the passing of peak woke, and much more. Episode Transcript New Discourses JRS EP73 - James Lindsay on Cynical Theories "National Divorce Is National Suicide," by James Lindsay Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America, by John McWhorterDr. James Lindsey is an American-born author, mathematician, and political commentator. He has written six books spanning a range of subjects including religion, the philosophy of science and postmodern theory. He is the co-founder of New Discourses.
Jim talks with Jonathan Rowson of Perspectiva about a new social practice they're creating, the antidebate. They discuss the nature of debate, the spectacle of endemic polarization, why debate may be irredeemable, multiple ways of knowing, the Oxford Union debates, the debate apocalypse of 2020, the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debate, the elitist aspect of debates, longtermism, the dialectic fallacy, presencing confusion, anti-debate as a practice, developing the form & facilitation skills, anti-debate trials to date, the current state of the art, setting a positive tone, choosing the question, the question bomb process, tableauing, why answering the question isn't necessary, swarming, epistemic seduction, drawing on Quaker Speaking, recruiting the enigmatics, prefiguring the culture you want to live in, scalability, disaffection with the ambient internet, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS Currents 041: Jonathan Rowson on Our Metacrisis Pickle JRS EP127 - Jonathan Rowson on The Moves That Matter JRS Currents 068: Jonathan Rowson on the Chess Drama JRS EP154 - Iain McGilchrist on The Matter With Things JRS EP155 - Iain McGilchrist Part 2: The Matter With Things "What Our Politics Needs Now: Anti-Debates," with Peter Limberg & Conor Barnes "The Anti-Debate: Experiments in the Art of Sensemaking for a World Gone Slightly Mad" - a film by Katie Teague "Is War Natural? (and other questions)" - YouTubeJonathan Rowson is co-founder and director of the research institute Perspectiva based in London. He is also the former director of the Social Brain Centre at the Royal Society of Arts and is a chess grandmaster and three-time British Chess Champion. His books include The Seven Deadly Chess Sins, Chess for Zebras, Spiritualize: Cultivating Spiritual Sensibility to Address 21st Century Challenges, and, The Moves That Matter: A Chess Grandmaster on the Game of Life.
Jim talks with Jeremy Sherman about the ideas in his book Neither Ghost nor Machine: The Emergence and Nature of Selves. They discuss how Jim found Jeremy's work, Jeremy's relationship with Terrence Deacon, the mystery of purpose, teleology, Aristotle's four causes, the natural history of trying, crypto-Cartesianism, aims, emergent constraints, hylomorphism, regularity, Kolmogorov complexity, the second law of thermodynamics, the struggle for existence, autocatalytic networks, leading theories of the origin of life, the autogen model, the missing link blind spot, selectively permeable membranes, the conditions for evolution, responsiveness, selective interaction, dire irony, templated autogen, the hologenic constraint, testability of the theory, inverse Darwinism, FOMO sapiens, humbly humbling people, and much more. Episode Transcript Neither Ghost nor Machine: The Emergence and Nature of Selves, by Jeremy Sherman What's Up With A**holes?: How to Spot and Stop Them Without Becoming One, by Jeremy Sherman JRS EP157 - Terrence Deacon on Mind’s Emergence From Matter JRS EP227 - Stuart Kauffman on the Emergence of Life JRS EP135 - Dennis Waters on Behavior & Culture in One DimensionJeremy Sherman, PhD, describes his work as “cradle to grave”: from the chemical origins of life to humankind’s grave situation. For nearly thirty years, Sherman has been a lead collaborator with Harvard/Berkeley neuroscientist/biological anthropologist Terrence Deacon. Together with other collaborators they have been developing a gap-free explanation for the emergence of telos and semiotics –selves struggling for their own existence (i.e. self-regenerating) from within nothing but physical entropic degeneration.
Jim talks with Stuart Kauffman about the ideas in the recent paper he co-authored with Andrea Roli, "Is the Emergence of Life an Expected Phase Transition in the Evolving Universe?" They discuss the fragmentation of the origins of life field, Pasteur's test of spontaneous generation, primitive soup, Watson & Crick's discovery of the structure of DNA, mutually catalyzing molecules, molecules as combinatorial objects, random catalysis, collectively autocatalytic sets, the origin of metabolism, composability elements, the earliest form of life, Darwin's warm little pond hypothesis, the theory of the adjacent possible, the TAP equation, why small molecule reproduction will be abundant in the universe, the Drake equation, Kantian wholes, the function of a part, autocatalytic closure, constraint closure, cycles of work, downward causation, information conservation vs the error catastrophe, exaptation, the new adjacent possible, why evolution is unendingly creative & mathematically unpredictable, what this implies about economics, Arrow-Debreu competitive general equilibrium, the impossibility of well-founded expectations, why we can't have dominion over the ongoing biosphere, an open-ended experiment to mix fungi with bacteria on sterilized sand, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS EP18 - Stuart Kauffman on Complexity, Biology & T.A.P. "Is the Emergence of Life an Expected Phase Transition in the Evolving Universe?", by Stuart Kauffman & Andrew Roli "Chemical Evolution: Life is a logical consequence of known chemical principles operating on the atomic composition of the universe," by Melvin Calvin "Autocatalytic chemical networks at the origin of metabolism," by Joana Xavier, Stuart Kauffman, et. al. JRS EP 167 - Bruce Damer on the Origins of Life JRS EP 171 - Bruce Damer Part 2: The Origins of Life - Implications JRS EP 138 - Brian Arthur on the Nature of Technology JRS EP 157 - Terrence Deacon on Mind's Emergence from Matter "A third transition in science?", by Stuart Kauffman & Andrea RoliStuart Alan Kauffman is an American theoretical biologist and complex systems researcher who studies the origin of life on Earth. Kauffman graduated from Dartmouth in 1960, was awarded the BA (Hons) by Oxford University (where he was a Marshall Scholar) in 1963, and completed a medical degree (MD) at the University of California, San Francisco in 1968. After completing his residency in Emergency Medicine, he moved into developmental genetics of the fruit fly, holding appointments first at the University of Chicago, then at the University of Pennsylvania, where he rose to Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics. Kauffman held a MacArthur Fellowship from 1987–1992.
Jim talks with Hannah Rosenberg about the ideas in her essay "An Answer to Red Pilldom." They discuss the meaning & origins of red pilldom, how Hannah encountered red pilldom in close friendships, the idea that women are submissive, differences between men & women, pair-bonding instincts, balancing mixed instincts, the idea of hypergamy, adulting, how dating apps may skew human interactions, nostalgia for the 1950s trad wife, the actual lives of 1950s housewives, the idea that motherhood is the highest fulfillment for a woman, the idea of a war on masculinity, outlets for aggression, the idea of a "wall" where male attention ends, humanity as a mesh network not a hierarchy, dominance & submission as signals, the idea that men are leaders, women in the Marine Corps, MAGA and wokery as mirror images, why communities of red pilldom exist, not getting caught in history's pendulum swings, and much more. Episode Transcript "An Answer to Red Pilldom," by Hannah RosenbergHannah Rosenberg, a tech entrepreneur and educator, holds a bachelor's degree in Economics from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her journey in the tech industry began as a web developer, leading to the establishment of her own development business in 2014. In 2017, she expanded her career by embracing the role of an educator, imparting her technical expertise to various organizations, including non-profits and her alma mater, the University of Illinois at Chicago. In addition to her professional achievements, Hannah's life experiences also play a crucial role. With 40 years of rich personal experience, she is a dedicated mother and has been in a committed marriage for 14 years. Her diverse perspective is further enhanced by extensive travel and having lived in three distinct regions of our beautiful world.
Jim talks with Bruce Damer about the new Center for MINDS and the ideas in his essay "Downloads from the Modern Dawn of Psychedelics." They discuss alternate ways psychedelics could have been introduced, Aldous Huxley & Humphry Osmond's speculative Outsight project, convergent vs divergent thinking, Bruce's mushroom trip with Terrence McKenna, concrescence into novelty, the stoned ape theory, the unreported influence of psychedelics on breakthroughs, Bruce's coming-out as a psychedelics user, psychedelic-assisted innovation, Bruce's naturally trippy brain, endogenous tripping, the Eleusinian Mysteries, the late Bronze Age collapse, the possibility that hallucinogens powered civilization, alcohol & the poison path, the decline in breakthrough research, the disincentivization of grand thinking, how the Center for Minds is beginning research via surveys, Jim's use of occasional heavy doses of THC, Bruce's set, setting & setup approach, finding the others, MDMA-assisted psychotherapy, the state of ketamine research, and much more. Episode Transcript "Downloads from the Modern Dawn of Psychedelics," by Bruce Damer Center for MINDS Center for MINDS Survey Currents 091: Bruce Damer on Psychedelics as Tools for Discovery The Immortality Key: Uncovering the Secret History of the Religion With No Name, by Brian MurareskuDr. Bruce Damer is Canadian-American multidisciplinary scientist, designer, and author. In his role as a world-renowned Astrobiologist at the UC Santa Cruz Department of Biomolecular Engineering, Dr. Damer collaborates with colleagues developing and testing a new scenario for the origin of life on Earth and where it might arise in the universe. As a designer he has provided innovative spacecraft architectures to NASA and others which could provide a viable path for the expansion of life and human civilization beyond the Earth.
Jim talks with Samo Burja about the ideas in his recent article "Geothermal Energy Turns Planets Into Power Sources." They discuss the heat beneath the earth's surface, contributors to the heat, technological dependency between fracking & geothermal, the math of electricity, earthquake risk, the limits of current geology, the value of better drilling tech, new approaches to drilling, gyrotrons, plasma torches, whether our civilization actually needs more energy, the local optimum of fossil fuels, bureaucratic incentives in energy, investment of social surplus, scientific welfare, metascience, giving academic tenure to brilliant 25-year-olds, a defense-favoring military epoch, the math of geothermal vs other combinations of energy sources, visions of a clean-energy future, and much more. Episode Transcript "Geothermal Energy Turns Planets Into Power Sources," by Samo Burja JRS EP117 - Samo Burja on Societal Decline JRS EP125 - Samo Burja on Socetial Decline: Part 2 JRS EP222 - Trent McConaghy on AI & Brain-Computer Interface Accelerationism (bci/acc)Samo Burja is the founder and President of Bismarck Analysis, a consulting firm that specializes in institutional analysis for clients in North America and Europe. Bismarck uses the foundational sociological research that Samo and his team have conducted over the past decade to deliver unique insights to clients about institutional design and strategy. Samo’s studies focus on the social and material technologies that provide the foundation for healthy human societies, with an eye to engineering and restoring the structures that produce functional institutions. He has authored articles and papers on his findings. His manuscript, Great Founder Theory, is available online. He is also a Research Fellow at the Long Now Foundation and Senior Research Fellow in Political Science at the Foresight Institute. Samo has spoken about his findings at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Y Combinator’s YC 120 conference, the Reboot American Innovation conference in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere. He spends most of his time in California and his native Slovenia.
Jim talks with Jordan Hall about the ideas in his essay "From City to Civium" and about his recent conversion to Christianity. They discuss scaling laws, superlinear scaling in cities & Metcalf's law, technologies of density, virtualization of space, ephemeralizing of communication, a tipping point in the virtualization of relationality, cities as killers, reaching the limits of the institutional forms that got us out of the 20th century, decoupling of body & mind, returning to the mesoscale, tech hygiene, reciprocal opening, what makes GameB hard, Jordan's experience with civiums, hierarchies of values & their inevitability, regaining functional cultural toolkits, pouring water on plants vs creating from scratch, how civium led to Christianity, distinguishing good & bad in religion, Jordan's lifelong agnosticism, the virtual, becoming an integrated self, ensoulment, egregores, whether egregores have agency, the origin of liturgy & liturgical practices, the challenge of bringing already-embedded individuals into embodied community, visiting & moving to Black Mountain, North Carolina, the ease of meaningfulness in the right context, being invited to church, Jordan's transition to believing in a personal God, a crisis of conscience, the Orthodox sensibility of "beauty-first," a relationship with goodness, understanding the Trinity, relationality as the essence of the triune God, a dimensional opening, faith as a faculty, the idea of being created by God in His image, adopting traditional gender values, the idea of abortion as murder, the hermeneutics of presence, Biblical inerrancy, why the kingdom of God is not theocracy, soul sovereignty, orienting toward a universal Good vs coherent pluralism, post-tragedy, growing community organically, the question of vocation, and much more. Episode Transcript "From City to Civium," by Jordan Hall JRS EP 170 - John Vervaeke and Jordan Hall on The Religion That Is Not a Religion JRS Currents 032: Tyson Yunkaporta on Spirits, GameB & Protopias "A Journey to GameB," by Jim Rutt JRS Currents 090: BJ Campbell and Patrick Ryan on EgregoresJordan Hall is the Co-founder and Executive Chairman of the Neurohacker Collective. He is now in his 17th year of building disruptive technology companies. Jordan’s interests in comics, science fiction, computers, and way too much TV led to a deep dive into contemporary philosophy (particularly the works of Gilles Deleuze and Manuel DeLanda), artificial intelligence and complex systems science, and then, as the Internet was exploding into the world, a few years at Harvard Law School where he spent time with Larry Lessig, Jonathan Zittrain and Cornel West examining the coevolution of human civilization and technology.
Jim talks with Trent McConaghy about the ideas in his recent essay "bci/acc: A Pragmatic Path to Compete with Artificial Superintelligence." They discuss the meaning of BCI (brain-computer interfaces) and acc (accelerationism), categories of AI, how much room there is for above-human intelligence, whether AI is achieving parallelism, the risks of artificial superintelligence (ASI), problems with deceleration, AI intelligences balancing each other, decentralized approaches to AI, problems with the "pull the plug" idea, humans as the weak security link, the silicon Midas touch, competing with AI using BCIs, the need for super-high bandwidth, the noninvasive road to BCIs, realistic killer apps, eye tracking, pragmatic telepathy, subvocalization, reaching adoption-level quality, the arc between noninvasive and full silicon, near-infrared sensors, issues around mass adoption of implants, maintaining cognitive liberty, the risk of giving malevolent ASIs the keys to the kingdom, whether humans plus ASIs might compete with ASIs, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS EP13 - Blockchain, AI, and DAOs "bci/acc: A Pragmatic Path to Compete with Artificial Superintelligence," by Trent McConaghy Ocean Protocol "Nature 2.0: The Cradle of Civilization Gets an Upgrade," by Trent McConaghy Trent McConaghy on TwitterTrent McConaghy is founder of Ocean Protocol. He has 25 years of deep tech experience with a focus on AI and blockchain. He co-founded Analog Design automation Inc. in 1999, which built AI-powered tools for creative circuit design. It was acquired by Synopsys in 2004. He co-founded Solido Design Automation in 2004, using AI to mitigate process variation and help drive Moore's Law. Solido was later acquired by Siemens. He then went on to launch ascribe in 2013 for NFTs on Bitcoin, then Ocean Protocol in 2017 for decentralized data markets for AI. He currently focuses on Ocean Predictoor for crowd-sourced AI prediction feeds.
Jim talks with George Hotz about running Comma, an open-source driving assistance company. They discuss breaking the carrier lock on the iPhone at seventeen, Google's Project Zero, zero days, Mobileye & proprietary perception algorithms, cameras vs lidar, 6 levels of self-driving automation, the reliability of human driving, self-driving cars as "demo complete," why corner cases aren't the issue, integrated world models, the challenge of defining lane lines, recognizing the right part of the road, behavioral cloning, the hugging test, Comma's data set, the small offset simulator, how to install Comma in a car, what it does, why high-precision maps aren't useful, problems with Waymo's approach, "trackless monorails," why current systems still use remote-control driving, hyper-fragile centralized systems, Tesla's approach, against magical inflection points, self-driving as a stepping stone to artificial life, why Comma doesn't do marketing, the regulatory environment, eyes off vs hands off, why self-driving cars are easier than general robotics, liability, functional safety, the Tinygrad machine learning framework, who's using it, and much more. Episode Transcript Comma TinygradGeorge Hotz is the founder of comma.ai and the tiny corp. He is working on self driving, robotics, and ML infrastructure with the goal of creating an operating system for silicon-stack life.
Jim talks with Lene Rachel Andersen about the ideas in her book Polymodernity: Meaning and Hope in a Complex World. They discuss the meaning of polymodernism, working with four cultural codes, polymodernism vs metamodernism, the flaw in combining stage theories with cultural history, the problem with postmodernism's deconstruction of guidance & boundaries, 3 factors leading to modernity, the beginnings of alienation, postmodernism as a critique of modernism, the danger of reifying theories, why a post-modern society would fall apart, learning from indigenous prehistoric cultures, the influence of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, Lene's relationship to Christianity and conversion to Judaism, being a practicing doubting Jew, long-term consequences of having good narratives that people believe in, Jewish law vs Hammurabi's Code, reading the Pentateuch, using post-modern tech to implement a pre-modern order, Emily Wilson's translation of The Iliad, mining the social learnings of the past with discernment, why religious people have often led the resistance to authoritarian regimes, true encouragement, the bildung rose, the problem with hypermodernism, the eternal misery of hypermodernist success, learning as one of the essences of being human, and much more. Episode Transcript Polymodernity: Meaning and Hope in a Complex World, by Lene Rachel Andersen "Polymodern Economics," by Lene Rachel Andersen The Nordic Secret: A European Story of Beauty and Freedom, by Lene Rachel Andersen JRS EP165 - Lene Rachel Andersen Part 1: Libertism JRS EP89 - Lene Rachel Andersen on Metamodernity God: A Biography, by Jack Miles "In Search of the 5th Attractor," by Jim RuttLene Rachel Andersen is an economist, author, futurist, philosopher and Bildung activist. She heads the think tank Nordic Bildung in Copenhagen and is a member of the Club of Rome. After studying business economy for three years, she worked as a substitute teacher before studying theology. During her studies, she wrote entertainment for Danish television until she decided to quit theology, become a full-time writer, and focus on technological development, big history, and the future of humanity. Since 2005, she has written 20 books and received two Danish democracy awards: Ebbe Kløvedal-Reich Democracy Baton (2007) and Døssing Prisen, the Danish librarians’ democracy prize (2012). Among her books are The Nordic Secret (2017, new edition 2024), Bildung: Keep Growing (2020), What is Bildung? (2021), Libertism (2022), and Polymodernity (2023, previously Metamodernity (2019)).
Jim talks with Katherine Gehl about her and Michael Porter's book, The Politics Industry: How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save Our Democracy. They discuss Jim's past familiarity with Michael Porter's work, Porter's five forces, the "what the hell is water" phenomenon, the Schoolhouse Rock problem, political industry theory, political payback for unhelpful activities, why political competitors are doing better as "customers" become more dissatisfied, the current American party system as a protected duopoly, nonprofit investments in things that have no chance, non-constitutional problems, the reversible accident of plurality voting, whether more parties are essential, how Ross Perot's 1992 election pressured the two parties to balance the budget, reforming the primary system, final-five voting, Alaska's experiment in final-four voting, instant runoffs, freeing players to make good strategic choices, lowering the barrier to entry for new thinking, and much more. Episode Transcript The Politics Industry: How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save Our Democracy, by Katherine Gehl and Michael Porter Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors, by Michael PorterKatherine Gehl is the originator of Final Five Voting (FFV)—a new election system designed to positively transform the incentives driving our dysfunctional politics. In 2020, Gehl published The Politics Industry: How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save Our Democracy (with co-author Michael Porter of Harvard Business School). Her work applied a competition lens and classic tools of industry analysis to politics for the first time. Today, Gehl leads the national Campaign for Final Five Voting which she co-founded with leaders across the political spectrum.
Jim talks with Max Borders about the ideas in his two-part essay series responding to Christopher Rufo's recent manifesto "The New Right Activism." They discuss the commentary form of the essays, pillar saints vs boy Pharoahs, the Gray Tribe, Rufo as a rockstar gladiator, the white-paper industrial complex, the Gramscian model of capturing the institutions, the tit-for-tat approach to politics, recapturing the power of the state to indoctrinate the youth, the wartime point of view, the means & ends problem, subversive innovation, the University of Austin, public universities as indoctrination factories, a Handmaid's Tale vision of virtue, why Rufo is more Machiavellian than Aristotelian, the danger of rejecting an open society, changing the language & the case study of "equity," defending abstract principles in politics, how Rufos misses the point about real power, re-enlivening the U.S.'s founding principles, and much more. Episode Transcript "Rufo the Reactionary, Part 1," by Max Borders (Substack) "The New Right Activism: A manifesto for the counter-revolution," by Christopher Rufo The Social Singularity, by Max Borders JRS EP76 - Max Borders on the Social SingularityMax Borders is the author of The Social Singularity (2018) and The Decentralist (2021). His latest book is called Underthrow (2023). Currently, he is working on two major projects: a cosmopolitan constitution designed to open the era of open-source law, and a global fraternal society dedicated to the mission, morality, and mutualism of the “Gray Tribe.”
Jim talks with Ben Goertzel about a paper he co-wrote, "OpenCog Hyperon: A Framework for AGI at the Human Level and Beyond." They discuss the way Ben defines AGI, problems with an economically oriented definition, the rate of advancement of a society, the history of OpenCog, mathematical models of intelligence, Jim's early use of OpenCog, a distributed Atomspace, Atomese vs MeTTa languages, knowledge metagraphs, why Ben didn't write a custom programming language for the original OpenCog, type theory, functional logic programming, moving from weirdly ugly to weirdly elegant, technical debt, grounding of Atoms, interfacing Hyperon with LLMs, nourishing a broader open-source community, hierarchical attention-based pattern recognition networks, heuristic induction, cognitive synergy, why scalability requires translating declarative representation into procedural form and vice versa, retrieval-augmented generation, predictive-coding-based learning as an alternative to back-propagation, the possibility of an InfoGAN-style transformer, and much more. Episode Transcript "OpenCog Hyperon: A Framework for AGI at the Human Level and Beyond," by Ben Goertzel et al.Dr. Ben Goertzel is a cross-disciplinary scientist, entrepreneur and author. Born in Brazil to American parents, in 2020 after a long stretch living in Hong Kong he relocated his primary base of operations to a rural island near Seattle. He leads the SingularityNET Foundation, the OpenCog Foundation, and the AGI Society which runs the annual Artificial General Intelligence conference. Dr. Goertzel’s research work encompasses multiple areas including artificial general intelligence, natural language processing, cognitive science, machine learning, computational finance, bioinformatics, virtual worlds, gaming, parapsychology, theoretical physics and more. He also chairs the futurist nonprofit Humanity+, serves as Chief Scientist of AI firms Rejuve, Mindplex, Cogito and Jam Galaxy, all parts of the SingularityNET ecosystem, and serves as keyboardist and vocalist in the Jam Galaxy Band, the first-ever band led by a humanoid robot.
Jim talks with Kevin Dickinson about the ideas in his recent essay "A Short History of the F-Word." They discuss the mystery of the F-word's origins, a damn fucking abbot in the sixteenth century, the hierarchy of curse words, religious profanities, the poet William Dunbar's use of "fukkit," the case of Roger Fuckedbythenavele, folk etymologies, false acronyms, movies with the most fucks, fucks per minute vs absolute number of fucks, a high Ngram watermark in 2017, the Lady Chatterley's Lover obscenity trial, senses of fuck, veiling words, John McWhorter's research, the history of fuck in the dictionary, language as fashion, and much more. Episode Transcript Kevin Dickinson at Big Think The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window Into Human Nature, by Steven Pinker Nine Nasty Words: English in the Gutter — Then, Now, and Forever, by John McWhorterKevin Dickinson is a staff writer and columnist at Big Think. His writing focuses on the intersection between education, psychology, business, and science. He holds a master’s in English and writing, and his articles have appeared in Agenda, RealClearScience, and the Washington Post.
Jim talks with Cody Moser about the ideas and findings in his and Paul Smaldino's paper "Innovation-Facilitating Networks Create Inequality." They discuss transient diversity, group performance vs the agent level, taking an agent-based modeling approach, Derex & Boyd's group potion-mixing experiment, no free lunch theorem, random network structures, an inverse correlation between network connectivity & performance, effects of sharing intermediate results, Fisher's fundamental theorem of natural selection, measuring inequality with the Gini coefficient, higher performance in less equal networks, connected caveman networks, ring networks, Ashby's good regulator theorem, exploration vs exploitation, randomly allocating lifetime endowed academic chairs to 25-year-olds, institutional design, generative entrenchment, implications for internet platform design, the parochial pyramid, tribalism at the Dunbar number, and much more. Episode Transcript "Innovation-Facilitating Networks Create Inequality," by Cody Moser & Paul Smaldino Saving Twitter—A Roundtable (Jim Rutt, Bo Winegard, & Cody Moser) "Partial connectivity increases cultural accumulation within groups," by Maxime Derex & Robert Boyd The Open Society and Its Enemies, by Karl PopperCody Moser is a PhD student in the Department of Cognitive and Information Sciences. His research examines the origins of individual and institutional behavior where he uses approaches from complex systems and evolutionary dynamics to study collective problem-solving, systems collapse, cultural evolution, and innovation. Before coming to UC Merced, he studied primatology where he worked with capuchin monkeys, dwarf and mouse lemurs, lorises, and aye-ayes. He obtained a B.S. in Anthropology with minors in statistics and biology from Florida State University, a Master’s in Anthropology from Texas A&M University, and worked for two years with The Music Lab in the Harvard Department of Psychology. He is interested in the history and philosophy of science and has written for a number of popular science venues on the applications of research from his field.
Jim talks with Douglas Rushkoff about the ideas in his podcast monologue/Substack post "Why I’m Finally Leaving X and Probably All Social Media." They discuss Douglas's history with social media, the early social internet, Facebook's parasitism of legacy news, the decontextualization of content, The WELL, owning your own words, leaving Facebook in 2013, Jim's social media sabbaticals, the opportunity to create an info agent, the number of daily interruptions, attention-deficit disorder as an adaptive strategy, books versus articles, effects of long-term social media use, the quest for nominal identity, how careful curation improves X, using social media as a professional writer, the organic in-between, strong vs weak social links, the ability of strong links to hold & metabolize, how the internet spawns billionaires, airline subsidies, Girardian mimesis, liberal universal humanism, rebuilding embodied life at the Dunbar number, John Vervaeke's "religion that is not a religion," starting where you are, and much more. Episode Transcript "Why I’m Finally Leaving X and Probably All Social Media," by Douglas Rushkoff Team Human, by Douglas Rushkoff Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity, by Douglas Rushkoff The WELL JRS EP30 - Nora Bateson on Complexity & the Transcontextual JRS EP 184 - Dave Snowden on Managing Complexity in Times of Crisis JRS EP 190 - Peter Turchin on Cliodynamics and End Times JRS EP 170 - John Vervaeke and Jordan Hall on The Religion That Is Not a ReligionNamed one of the “world’s ten most influential intellectuals” by MIT, Douglas Rushkoff is an author and documentarian who studies human autonomy in a digital age. His twenty books include the just-published Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires, as well as the recent Team Human, based on his podcast, and the bestsellers Present Shock, Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus, Program or Be Programmed, Life Inc, and Media Virus. He also made the PBS Frontline documentaries Generation Like, The Persuaders, and Merchants of Cool. His book Coercion won the Marshall McLuhan Award, and the Media Ecology Association honored him with the first Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity.Rushkoff’s work explores how different technological environments change our relationship to narrative, money, power, and one another. He coined such concepts as “viral media,” “screenagers,” and “social currency,” and has been a leading voice for applying digital media toward social and economic justice. He is a research fellow of the Institute for the Future, and founder of the Laboratory for Digital Humanism at CUNY/Queens, where he is a Professor of Media Theory and Digital Economics. He is a columnist for Medium, and his novels and comics, Ecstasy Club, A.D.D, and Aleister & Adolf, are all being developed for the screen.
Jim talks with Robin Hanson about the ideas in his recent Substack writings on human fertility rates. They discuss why the fertility rate is important, fertility decline as a harbinger of societal decline, how income impacts fertility rate, investing in status markers vs fertility, runaway selection effects, copying elites, absolute vs relative levels of wealth, South Korea's low fertility rate, implications of the decline, losing scale economies, pay-as-you-go retirement plans, innovation as linear to population, effects of declining innovation, likely dominant ethnicities of the future, insular high-fertility religious communities, what happens in a scenario of worldwide population decline, the main trends causing low fertility, high-effort parenting standards, legal protections for religious groups, capstone vs cornerstone marriages, learning from the winners, Robin's childhood cult experience, promoting less crazy insular subcultures, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS EP2 Robin Hanson – Decision Making and “The Age of Em” Overcoming Bias (Robin's Substack) "16 Fertility Scenarios," by Robin Hanson JRS EP 170 - John Vervaeke and Jordan Hall on the Religion That Is Not a ReligionRobin 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.
Jim talks with Joy Hirsch about the findings in her paper "Separable Processes for Live 'In-Person' and Live 'Zoom-like' Faces," which explores how humans respond at the neural level to Zoom calls versus in-person interactions. They discuss the advantages of near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) & how it works, the speed of imaging, brain imaging for social interactions, what fNIRS can do that fMRI can't, previous work on face processing, the design of the experiment, controlling for distance, angles, & presence, the data collection process, longer eye fixation in in-person interactions, increased pupil size compared with Zoom calls, differences in neural activity between groups, EEG findings, decreased neural synchrony in Zoom interactions, what the results might indicate, social media & strength of social links, how this research might be used to make video calls more brain-friendly, and much more. Episode Transcript "Separable Processes for Live 'In-Person' and Live 'Zoom-like' Faces," by Joy Hirsch et. al.Joy Hirsch is the Elizabeth Mears and House Jameson Professor of Psychiatry, Comparative Medicine, and Neuroscience; and the Director of the Brain Function Laboratory at Yale School of Medicine. The overarching goal of her research is to understand the fundamental neural mechanisms that underlie live interactive social behaviors between individuals. Her laboratory has developed multi-modal two-person neuroimaging technology based on near infrared spectroscopy, fNIRS, configured for real-time live face-to-face and dialogue interactions between humans.
Jim talks with recurring guest Ben Goertzel about the ideas in his paper "Generative AI vs. AGI: The Cognitive Strengths and Weaknesses of Modern LLMs." They discuss the exponential acceleration of AI development, why LLMs by themselves won't lead to AGI, OpenAI's integrative system, skyhooking, why LLMs may be useful for achieving AGI, solving LLM hallucinations, why Google hasn't replicated GPT-4, LLM-tuning lore, what differentiates AGI from other forms of AI, conceptualizing general intelligence, Weaver's theory of open-ended intelligence, multiple intelligence, the Turing test & the Minsky prize, what LLMs aren't good at, the danger of defining AGI as whatever LLMs can't do, the derivative & imitative character of LLMs, banality, doing advanced math with GPT-4, why the human brain doesn't form arbitrary abstractions, the duality of heuristics & abstractions, adding recurrence to transformers, OpenCog Hyperon, using a weighted labeled metagraph, orienting toward self-reflection & self-rewriting, the challenge of scalability of infrastructure, acceleration on non-LLM projects, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS Currents 072: Ben Goertzel on Viable Paths to True AGI "Generative AI vs. AGI: The Cognitive Strengths and Weaknesses of Modern LLMs," by Ben Goertzel "OpenCog Hyperon: A Framework for AGI at the Human Level and Beyond," by Ben Goertzel et. al.Dr. Ben Goertzel is a cross-disciplinary scientist, entrepreneur and author. Born in Brazil to American parents, in 2020 after a long stretch living in Hong Kong he relocated his primary base of operations to a rural island near Seattle. He leads the SingularityNET Foundation, the OpenCog Foundation, and the AGI Society which runs the annual Artificial General Intelligence conference. Dr. Goertzel’s research work encompasses multiple areas including artificial general intelligence, natural language processing, cognitive science, machine learning, computational finance, bioinformatics, virtual worlds, gaming, parapsychology, theoretical physics and more. He also chairs the futurist nonprofit Humanity+, serves as Chief Scientist of AI firms Rejuve, Mindplex, Cogito and Jam Galaxy, all parts of the SingularityNET ecosystem, and serves as keyboardist and vocalist in the Jam Galaxy Band, the first-ever band led by a humanoid robot.
Jim talks with Frank Lantz about the ideas in his new book, The Beauty of Games. They discuss Frank's analysis of Benjamin Soule's arcade game Serpentes, reflecting on the enjoyment of games, panicking & choking, levels of understanding, Jim and his wife's experience playing Othello, Hanabi, partnership games, games as an aesthetic form, art vs aesthetics, playing for its own sake, thinking & doing, fulfilling the desire to be a coherent agent in the world, the performance of desire, games as systems, heuristics, strategy in military games, a game as a series of interesting decisions, overindexing on the flow state, going up the ladder of heuristics, maximizing for rate of learning, systems literacy, games as an art form for nerds, and much more. Episode Transcript The Beauty of Games, by Frank Lantz Currents 097: Frank Lantz on Network Wars and Games Donkeyspace (Frank's Substack)Frank Lantz is a game designer with a focus on exploring emerging technology to create new kinds of gameplay. He is the Founding Chair of the NYU Game Center, the co-founder of Area/Code Games (acquired by Zynga in 2011), the co-founder of Everybody House Games and the creator of the game Universal Paperclips. He has taught game design for over 20 years at New York University, Parsons School of Design, and the School of Visual Arts and has created numerous influential talks and writings on the subject of games.
Jim talks with C. Owen Paepke in part three of a mini-series on the No Labels potential third-party presidential campaign. They discuss Owen's early chemistry career, being without a political party, the situation of voting against instead of for candidates, the distribution of conservatism between parties over time, the Ross Perot 1992 campaign, the nomination of Antonin Scalia, primaries as the root of all partisan evil, the 2022 elections, the percentage of voters who want neither Biden nor Trump, the value of vetoing spending bills, solving the electrical storage problem, No Labels' commitment to pulling a spoiler candidate, what spoiling means, No Labels' visibility problem, possible candidates, the timing of the convention, the desire to avoid gamesmanship, recent Biden vs Trump polls, and much more. Episode Transcript The Purple Presidency: How Voters Can Reclaim the White House for Bipartisan Governance, by Owen Paepke EP 204 Matt Bennett on the Case Against No Labels EP 206 Ryan Clancy on No LabelsC. Owen Paepke is the author of The Evolution of Progress (named best nonfiction book of 1993 by NPR’s Talk of the Nation) and the three-volume series The Seinfeld Election, which was praised by reviewers as “a provocative investigation into the American political divide.” He has written and spoken widely on technology and science policy, including a keynote address on the future of science to the fiftieth-anniversary meeting of the Federation of American Scientists and a speech on the prospects for technological and economic progress at the Smithsonian Institution. He lives in Arizona, where he practiced for many years as an attorney specializing in antitrust and intellectual property, and is a graduate of Stanford and the University of Chicago.
Jim talks with Jack Visnjic, aka Lantern Jack, about Polybius's theory of anacyclosis and cyclical history. They discuss the origins of the name Lantern Jack, cyclical patterns in history, a one-minute history of the first millennium B.C., public gain vs private gain, Polybius's concept of anacyclosis, great man theory vs processes & institutions, examples of anacyclosis, whether Rome was ever a democracy, critiques of anacyclosis, corruption & collective reaction, imperialistic growth, the Glorious Revolution in 1688, why Spain & France didn't transition to aristocracy, anacyclosis in the modern world, Polybius's influence on the Founding Fathers of the U.S., the impressiveness of the Founding Fathers, mobocracy, fighting to the death over second- and third-order issues, the crisis epoch, factional division as a feature not a bug, and much more. Episode Transcript Ancient Greece Declassified (Podcast) Lantern Jack on YouTube The Invention of Duty: Stoicism as Deontology, by Jack Visnjic JRS EP 190 - Peter Turchin on Cliodynamics and End TimesJack Visnjic is a classicist and historian of philosophy interested in uncovering long-term patterns in history. He earned his PhD from Princeton University with a dissertation on the origins of the notion of moral duty. He later expanded that project into a book titled The Invention of Duty: Stoicism as Deontology. For several years he was director of research at the Anacyclosis Institute, a think tank which seeks to understand the trajectory of modern democracy by studying the long history of democracies. And his biggest passion is his podcast Ancient Greece Declassified, through which he strives to make the Classics accessible and relevant to a broad audience.
Jim talks with Paul Watson about his recent book Hit Man for the Kindness Club: High Seas Escapades and Heroic Adventures of an Eco-Activist. They discuss an early friendship with a family of beavers, cruelty to animals, the Kindness Club, moral commitments, rescuing cattle from a slaughterhouse, less cow farts & more whale poop, the 3 laws of ecology, the issue of eating animals, the growth of the vegetarian/vegan movement, an occupation at Stanley Park, co-founding Greenpeace, the strategy of aggressive non-violence, killing baby Hitler, painting baby seals, creating Whale Wars, history of the whaling moratorium, the absence of enforcement, Canada's Seal Protection Act, Edward Abbey, the Southern Ocean campaigns, escaping arrest in Germany, targeting illegal activities, inventing tree spiking, the importance of good legal defense, funding sources, founding Sea Shepherd, current pursuits, and much more. Episode Transcript Hit Man for the Kindness Club: High Seas Escapades and Heroic Adventures of an Eco-Activist, by Captain Paul Watson Trashing the Planet: How Science Can Help Us Deal With Acid Rain, Depletion of the Ozone, and the Soviet Threat Among Other Things, by Dixy Lee Ray The Monkey Wrench Gang, by Edward Abbey Paul Watson Foundation Neptune's PiratesCaptain Paul Watson is a marine wildlife conservation and environmental activist. Watson was one of the founding members and directors of Greenpeace. In 1977, he left Greenpeace and founded the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. A renowned speaker, accomplished author, master mariner, and lifelong environmentalist, Captain Watson has been awarded many honors for his dedication to the oceans and to the planet.
Jim talks with Ryan Clancy, the chief strategist for No Labels, in the second of a 3-part series exploring different aspects of the No Labels possible third-party presidential campaign. They discuss the origins & history of the campaign, the idea of an independent unity presidential ticket, increasing polarization, realistic energy policy, avoiding a second Trump term, an open process for nomination to the ticket, proper environmental conditions for running, the problem with fixing democracy by having less democracy, the history of third party runs, vote shrinkage, how to estimate plausibility, a likely final decision point in July, plans for a convention, the odds of a Biden-Harris ticket beating Trump, building transparent exit triggers into the post-convention process, and much more. Episode Transcript No Labels Common Sense policy booklet JRS EP 204 - Matt Bennett on the Case Against No LabelsRyan Clancy has been a speechwriter, a spokesperson and a storytelling partner for some of the world’s most respected leaders and organizations: writing for then U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, Sir Elton John and Shaquille O’Neal; developing corporate narratives, and executive positioning plans for Fortune 500 companies and CEOs, and investment memos for start-up companies and entrepreneurs; and advising political reform groups and candidates on all facets of fundraising, communications and political strategy. He is currently the chief strategist at No Labels.
Jim talks with Matthew Pirkowski about the ideas in a recent tweet thread on time preference and its relationship with cooperation. They discuss the definition of time preference, defining parasitism, asymmetrical relationships, mutualism, commensalism, the increase in short-term thinking, a decrease in qualitative change, realization & potential, an increase in uncertainty, the interruption of attentional loops, a gossip protocol, the complexity catastrophe, the maximum number of daily interruptions, short-term money-on-money return, disintegration of network statistics, trustless infrastructure & cognitive chunking, coordinating at a higher level, zero-knowledge proofs, social immune systems, structural prerequisites of parasitism, Bitcoin as a metacentralizing attractor, building the modeling toolkit to understand causal closures within networks, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS Currents 094: Matthew Pirkowski on Blockchain Consensus Mechanisms Matthew's tweet thread on time preference & cooperation "Crypto Beyond Capitalism: The Rise of Distributed Valerism," by Matthew PirkowskiMatthew Pirkowski works at the intersection of software, psychology, and complex systems. These interests first took root while studying Evolutionary Psychology and assisting with Behavioral Economic research at Yale’s Comparative Cognition Laboratory. From there Matthew began a career in software engineering, where he applied these interests to the development of software interfaces used by millions around the world, most notably as a member of Netflix’s Television UI team, where he worked on experimental initiatives conceptualizing and prototyping the future of entertainment software.Presently, Matthew is building the underlying modeling architecture at Bioform Labs, a company focused on using the Active Inference toolkit to model organizations as emergent cybernetic organisms. He believes these models can help organizations manage their deployment of and interaction with AI-based agents, as well as more adaptively manage their own emergent complexity.
Jim talks with Matt Bennett about his arguments against the third-party political campaign No Labels. They discuss Matt's steelman of the campaign, being politically homeless, nuclear energy & the American left's unrealistic energy policies, the problem with No Labels' theory about moving candidates in their direction, the credibility of winning the election, two theories of preventing another Trump presidency, the 1992 Ross Perot campaign, candidates for the No Labels ticket, growing disgust with the political establishment, the No Labels policy platform, the epistemology of the decision, independents as leaners, Teddy Roosevelt's third-party bid, the difficulty of finding a candidate more appealing than Trump to Trump supporters, the plausibility attractor, consequences of Robert F. Kennedy & Cornel West's decision to run as independents, and much more. Episode Transcript No Labels Policy BookletMatt Bennett is Senior Vice President for Public Affairs and a co-founder of Third Way. He previously served in the White House as a Deputy Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Affairs for President Clinton, where he was the principal White House liaison to governors and covered a wide range of issues, including disaster response, Medicaid, immigration, education and others. Prior to that, he served in Vice President Al Gore’s office. He was Communications Director of the Clark for President Campaign in 2004, and from 2001-2004 was Director of Public Affairs for Americans for Gun Safety. Mr. Bennett appears frequently as a political commentator on television and radio and is quoted frequently in newspapers including The New York Times and The Washington Post. He has appeared on 60 Minutes, Today, Good Morning America, Meet the Press, NPR and almost all major cable political programs. Mr. Bennett practiced law in Washington D.C. from 1993-1997. He earned his JD from the University of Virginia School of Law and has a Bachelor’s degree in History from the University of Pennsylvania.
Jim talks with Robert Sapolsky about the ideas in his book Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will. They discuss what motivates his writing about the topic, turtles all the way down, closing off the escape valves, the general critique of determinism, 4 positions on free will, naturalism vs determinism, intent, free will vs agency, Phineas Gage's famous brain injury, disruption of cognitive abilities, the limitations of metacognition, Benjamin Libet's volition experiments, why consciousness research doesn't have to do with free will, free won't, the theory of grit, an update to the marshmallow test, cusp decisions, deterministic chaos, the De Broglie-Bohm theory, New Age quantum bullshit, emergent complexity, downward causality, how attention determines who we become, the noble lie, why rejecting free will doesn't make people less ethical, and much more. Episode Transcript Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will, by Robert Sapolsky JRS EP105 - Christof Koch on Consciousness JRS EP 148 - Antonio de Masio on Feeling and Knowing JRS EP 178 - Anil Seth on A New Science of Consciousness JRS EP108 - Bernard Baars on Consciousness JRS Currents 083: Joscha Bach on Synethic IntelligenceRobert M. Sapolsky is the author of several works of nonfiction, including A Primate’s Memoir, The Trouble with Testosterone, and Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers. His most recent book, Behave, was a New York Times bestseller and named a best book of the year by The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. He is a professor of biology and neurology at Stanford University and the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant.” He and his wife live in San Francisco.
Jim talks with Neil Howe about the ideas in his new book, The Fourth Turning Is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us About How and When This Crisis Will End. They discuss 3 ways humans have understood time, the break with cyclical time, how linear progress gives rise to social cycles, generational change, how phase of life alters the impact of events, coining the term Millennial, generational cycles, the meaning and nature of saecula, the Great Awakenings, Turnings & commonalities between them, imagining Turnings as seasons, supply & demand for order, collective generational personalities, the current strengthening of families & multi-generational living, opposite experiences in the same phase of living, the growing gender divide, stages of a Fourth Turning, the recent primacy of political differences, extreme mobilization of publics, the acquiring of executive authority, the chances that an endogenous cataclysm kills .1 percent of the U.S. population, commonality through difference, why Fourth Turnings are not horrible accidents, Ekpyrosis, what a new spring might look like, why huge reforms are only enacted in times of crisis, and much more. Episode Transcript The Fourth Turning Is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us About How and When This Crisis Will End, by Neil Howe JRS EP 190 - Peter Turchin on Cliodynamics and End TimesNeil Howe is the Managing Director of Demography at Hedgeye Risk Management, an independent financial research firm, as well as President of LifeCourse Associates. Howe is a renowned authority on generations and social change in America. An acclaimed bestselling author and speaker, he is the nation's leading thinker on today's generations—who they are, what motivates them, and how they will shape America's future.
Jim talks with Tobias Dengel about the ideas in his book The Sound of the Future: The Coming Age of Voice Technology. They discuss the idea that voice tech will be the biggest shift since mobile, the problem of public babble, positives & negatives of current voice tech, changing norms around speaking to devices, Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), using LLMs through a voice interface, improving communication cycles for incapacitated people, smart speakers vs smart mics, problems with the voice-to-voice paradigm, multimodal use cases, using voice interfaces for writing, finetuned LLMs in combination with voice tech, using LLMs to check each other, Jim's method for reducing LLM hallucinations, improving agent performance in customer service, the state of the art in voice-to-text, Baumol's cost disease, the Jevons paradox, a golden age of innovation, Talon hands-free input, the possibility of a pushback against public babble, coming changes in medicine, privacy issues & the industry's violation of trust, the uncanny valley, concurrent communication, a new horizon for video games, low-hanging fruit, interfaces between humans and robots, innovations in model testing & training, selecting models, an arms race between models creating content & models curating content, the info agent opportunity, the human capacity for interruptions, defending attention & flow, whether voice tech will make interruptions better or worse, and much more. Transcript The Sound of the Future: The Coming Age of Voice Technology, by Tobias Dengel with Karl Weber Talon JRS EP123 - Jamie Wheal on Recapturing the RaptureTobias Dengel is president of WillowTree, a TELUS International Company, a global leader in digital product design and development, with 13 offices in North America, South America and Europe, headquartered in Charlottesville VA. The company has been named by Inc. magazine to the Inc. 5000 list of America’s fastest growing companies for 11 straight years. WillowTree’s clients include some of the best-known brands in the world, such as T Mobile, Mastercard, Capital One, HBO, Fox, Time Warner, PepsiCo, Regal Cinemas, Charles Schwab, Johnson & Johnson, Lidl, Wyndham Hotels, Hilton Hotels, Holiday Inn, Canadian Broadcasting Corp, Synchrony Bank, Edward Jones Investments, and National Geographic. These industry leaders trust WillowTree to design and develop their websites, apps, internal systems and voice interfaces.
Jim talks with Brian Chau about recent advancements in AI and viewing AI's relationship to society and politics through a pluralistic lens. They discuss fixed frames on AI, the horseless carriage fallacy, AI as a million dumb people, how LLMs invert the film archetype, Jim's ScriptHelper project, intuitive recombination, creating a fake political party, why AI threatens the legacy press, the significance of house style, incentivizing pluralism, why AI could power the periphery, the information agent concept, billboard measures in music, AI voice covers, the stultification of consensus, liquid democracy, applying statistical ML to prompt engineering, the need for on-the-ground testing of LLM applications, the problem of nanny rails, corrections in AI regulation, and much more. Episode Transcript AI Pluralism Newsletter JRS Currents 070: Brian Chau on Propaganda & Populism "AI Threatens Legacy Press Because They Rely on Style Over Substance," by Brian ChauBrian Chau is a mathematician by training and is tied for the youngest Canadian to win a gold medal at the International Olympiad in Informatics. He writes software for a living while posting on his spare time. He writes independently on American bureaucracy and political theory and has contributed to Tablet Magazine. His political philosophy can be summed up as “see the world as it is, not as you wish it to be.” Everything else is application.
Jim talks with Yascha Mounk about the ideas in his new book The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power. They discuss tribalism among progressives, universalism, the story of Kila Posey, how over-emphasizing ethnic identity fosters zero-sum racial conflicts, how identitarianism led to excess Covid deaths, Foucault's rejection of grand narratives, Edward Said's post-colonialism, Gayatri Spivak's strategic essentialism, being blind to race vs being blind to racism, critical race theory, Derrick Bell's idea of the permanence of racism, how the rejection of universalism escaped college campuses, why progressive organizations are tearing themselves apart, the logic of collective action, how progressive activists have passed off their ideas as those of all non-white people, statistics on police violence, Frederick Douglass's 4th of July speech, cultural appropriation, retaining trust in persuasion, fighting for liberalism, personal & political aspects of the identity trap, and much more. Episode Transcript The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power, by Yascha Mounk "Why the Latest Campus Cancellation Is Different," by Yascha Mounk JRS EP197 - Susan Neiman on Why Left Is Not Woke "A Political Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force," by Roland Fryer, Jr.Yascha Mounk is a writer and academic known for his work on the rise of populism and the crisis of liberal democracy. Born in Germany to Polish parents, Mounk received his BA in history from Trinity College Cambridge, and his PhD in government from Harvard University. He is a professor of the practice of international affairs at Johns Hopkins University, the founder of the digital magazine Persuasion, a contributing editor at The Atlantic, host of the podcast “The Good Fight,” a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and the author of The Great Experiment and The Identity Trap.
Jim talks with Cory Doctorow about the ideas in his new book The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation. They discuss Cory's long affiliation with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, destroying Big Tech instead of "fixing" it, why tech lords are not evil geniuses, how Big Tech consolidated, antitrust law, the felony contempt of business model, interoperability, the high-speed shell game of digital, the kill zone, the case of Diapers.com, the falling fortunes of tech workers, defining IP, Grokster, "polite competition," automated notice and takedown, Jim's proposal for content moderation, the flexibility of fair use, Interoperable Facebook, prioritizing individual choice, and much more. Episode Transcript The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation, by Cory Doctorow Craphound Pluralistic JRS EP 4 Cory Doctorow - "Radicalized," Race and Resilience Radicalized, by Cory Doctorow Red Team Blues, by Cory Doctorow "Musk and Moderation," by Jim Rutt Interoperable Facebook - EFFCory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist, and journalist. He is the author of many books, most recently The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation, a Big Tech disassembly manual; Red Team Blues, a science fiction crime thriller; Chokepoint Capitalism, nonfiction about monopoly and creative labor markets; the Little Brother series for young adults; In Real Life, a graphic novel; and the picture book Poesy the Monster Slayer. In 2020, he was inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.
Jim talks with Susan Neiman about the ideas in her latest book, Left Is Not Woke. They discuss the history & meaning of wokeness, the underlying reactionary assumptions of wokeness, making leftism & socialism acceptable terms, how the New Left of the Sixties set leftism back for a generation, disentangling left & woke, the right & tribalism, progressivism as a child of the Enlightenment, normative vs descriptive claims, refuting the idea of reason as an instrument of violence, why Hume doesn't belong to the Enlightenment, the danger of sheer subjectivity, data & empiricism, rates of police killings by race, liberal universal humanism, the term liberalism, identitarianism, the blacklisting of Paul Robeson, the idea that a ltruism is simply power politics, the appeal to the Stone Age brain, hope vs optimism, and much more. Left Is Not Woke, by Susan Neiman Why Grow Up?: Subversive Thoughts for an Infantile Age, by Susan NeimanSusan Neiman is an American philosopher and writer. She has written extensively on the Enlightenment, moral philosophy, metaphysics, and politics. Her work shows that philosophy is a living force for contemporary thinking and action.
Jim talks with Pamela Denise Long about the ideas in an open letter from the Coalition of Concerned Freedmen to college presidents, responding to the U.S. Supreme Court's decision on race-based affirmative action. They discuss the organizational developmental consultancy Youthcentrix, the Coalition of Concerned Freedmen (CCF), the meaning of the freedmen moniker, the different types of manumission, the use of the term Negro, the four points of the Coalition's press release, certification of lineage, the ratio of affirmative action beneficiaries who are freedmen, lineage-specific structuring, merit & restitution, the mismatch issue in higher education, developmental support of students, the left's excoriation of Justice Clarence Thomas, Lincoln Republicanism, the impact of immigration on multi-generational Black Americans, skepticism of a Black-Brown Coalition, the blending of Black and LGBTQIA+ agendas, Denise's view on the Republican presidential primaries, why Republicans should be leading reparations, cash vs institutional reparations, and much more.
Episode Transcript Youthcentrix The Coalition of Concerned Freedmen Press Release: Open Letter to College Presidents "Black Leaders Have Sold Out Our Community to the Immigration Lobby," by Pamela Denise Long "Stop Appropriating Black History to Push an LGBTQ Political Agenda," by Pamela Denise Long
Pamela Denise Long is a 7th+ generation American, principal consultant of Youthcentrix®, award winning business consultant for implementing trauma-informed diversity, equity, inclusion, and antiracism, a contributor at Newsweek and political commentator featured on FOX News, Hill TV, Real Clear Politics, The Grio Politics, Breitbart, and more. Denise is National Coordinator for the Coalition of Concerned Freedmen™, the issuer of a recent news release to college presidents regarding lineage based affirmative action.
Jim talks with Michael R.J. Bonner about the ideas in his book In Defense of Civilization: How Our Past Can Renew Our Present. They discuss the meaning of civilization, Gobekli Tepe, why technological change didn't bring about civilization, how civilization produces clarity, beauty, and order, why civilization is preferable to the alternatives, the limits of cities, the dynamics of collapse, Francis Fukuyama's end of history idea, revivals, how interconnectivity leads to fragility, the Bronze Age collapse, the collapse of Rome, cultural pluralism & academic freedom in the 9th century, the paradoxical outcome of the Renaissance, the rediscovery of Aristotle, combining Enlightenment clarity with medieval expansiveness, the evils of postmodernism, the dark side of Romanticism, the basis of religious belief, public ritual vs religious belief, futurism, the limits of skepticism, wokism as a religion, the need for grand narratives, a common humanity, and much more.
Episode Transcript In Defense of Civilization: How Our Past Can Renew Our Present, by Michael R.J. Bonner Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, by James C. Scott JRS EP 190 - Peter Turchin on Cliodynamics and End Times The Fourth Turning Is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us About How and When This Crisis Will End, by Neil Howe JRS Currents 100: Sara Walker and Lee Cronin on Time as an Object The Collapse of Complex Societies, by Joseph A. Tainter JRS EP 106 - Michael Strevens on the Irrational History of Science
Dr Michael Bonner is a Canadian communications and public-policy expert with more than a decade of service in federal and provincial government. He is a historian of ancient Iran, holds a doctorate in Oriental Studies from the University of Oxford, and is a contributing editor to The Dorchester Review. His new book In Defense of Civilization: How Our Past Can Renew Our Present was published by the Sutherland House in April of 2023.
Jim talks with Bob Reid about identity verification and the financial stack behind his global financial platform Everest. They discuss decentralized user-owned identity, identity as a trillion-dollar opportunity, competing with customers, Know Your Customer, types of identity, the breakout fraud, biometric systems, building societal trust, India's Aadhar system, Justin Trudeau's freeze on protesters' bank accounts, preventing governmental choke points, how to use Everest, the application stack, Facebook's missed opportunity to build identity, the coming fake-identity AI tsunami, real names vs anonymity, levels of verification, preventing exploits, the likelihood of social revolution in Europe, the accuracy of biometrics, the difference between a social graph & identity, paying a contractor with crypto, understanding Automated Clearing House & Single Euro Payments Area, tokenizing securities, why the user needs to control digital identity, and much more.
Episode Transcript Everest.org THE Foundation EverWallet metacrisis.xyz
Bob Reid is the CEO and co-founder of Everest, a licensed crypto custodian with its own high-speed blockchain, and the world’s first global, programmable stablecoin.
Jim talks with Aydan Connor about improving American food systems and reducing waste. They discuss Aydan's experience in the craft brewing industry, extremification of beer styles, wastefulness in beer production, how Aydan became interested in food systems, the obsession with consumer choice, how the current system prices in waste, food waste ratios in different countries, where in the chain food waste occurs, the requirement of processed food, unintentional communities, maximizing communal freedom of choice, CSAs as a non-solution, creating tighter networks, decentralized processing systems, America's low food expenditure, needed infrastructure & coordination, a network of networks, the scale advantage, the squeeze on wages, diversifying work tasks, tips for reducing domestic food waste, making a plan before you buy food, on-site food safety testing, bulk freezers with nitrogen flushing, and much more.
JRS EP131 - Jason Mauck on #FarmWeird
Aydan Connor has worked as a professional craft beer brewer in the Midwest for eight years, and has participated in the buildout of multiple brewery startups. At the beginning of his career, he was brewing batches as small as 10 gallons. Over the years, he worked directly with packaging equipment of various types, even leading as an operator of a mobile canning line to package onsite for other breweries. Currently, he works as a beer brewer at a regional craft brewery, brewing batches as large as 8,000 gallons. Employing direct knowledge of food processing, he has a vision for intelligent food systems which synthesize basic equipment and facilities technologies in combination with block chain inventory management towards decreasing food waste and increasing quality on any parameter. He believes these systems could act as a generative ground for building communities more awake and aware of the environments in which we can thrive.
Jim has a wide-ranging talk with David Krakauer about the ideas in his forthcoming paper "The Structure of Complexity in Machine Learning Science" and how AI may alter the course of science. They discuss data-driven science vs theory-driven science, a bifurcation in science, the protein folding problem, brute force methods, the origin of induction in David Hume, the origin of neural networks in deductive thinking of the '40s, super-Humean models, crossing the statistical uncanny valley, ultra-high-dimensionality, adaptive computation, why genetic algorithms might come back, Chomsky's poverty of the stimulus, the lottery ticket hypothesis, neural nets as pre-processors for parsimonious science, how human expertise constrains model-building, GPT-4's arithmetic problem, cognitive synergy, why LLMs aren't AGIs, incompressible representations, gravitational lensing, the new sciences LLMs will lead to, encoding adaptive history, Jim's ScriptWriter software, discovery engines vs libraries vs synthesizers, the history of science as a history of constraint, Occam's razor & meta-Occam, assembly theory, whether existential risk is a marketing ploy, the Idiocracy risk, using empirical precedent in tech regulation, networks of info agents, the outsourcing of human judgment, and much more.
Episode Transcript JRS EP10 - David Krakauer: Complexity Science Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life, by Daniel Dennett JRS Currents 100: Sara Walker and Lee Cronin on Time as an Object
David Krakauer's research explores the evolution of intelligence and stupidity on Earth. This includes studying the evolution of genetic, neural, linguistic, social, and cultural mechanisms supporting memory and information processing, and exploring their shared properties. President of the Santa Fe Institute since 2015, he served previously as the founding director of the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, the co-director of the Center for Complexity and Collective Computation, and professor of mathematical genetics, all at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Jim talks with Alicia Juarrero about her new book Context Changes Everything: How Constraints Create Coherence. They discuss Aristotle's four causes, applying them to complex dynamical systems, the overfocus on efficient cause, naive Newtonianism, nothing-but-ism, reconceptualizing causality in terms of constraints, mereology, constraint regimes, ascribing causal powers to emergent properties, the roots of panpsychism, Searle's comparison of consciousness with digestion, kinds of constraints, the Dysons' notion of analog control, why analog is more efficient, identity as a set of interdependent constraints, surface vs deep dyslexia & early neural nets, the work of Geoffrey Hinton, the species competitive exclusion principle, cardinality vs ordinality, the social evolution of cassava, Rayleigh-Benard convection, dissipative systems, Alicia's disagreement with Michael Polanyi, the architecture of the circulatory system, scaffolding, top-down causality, many-to-one transitions, degeneracy, pluripotentiality, the ship of Theseus, 4E cognitive science, and much more.
Context Changes Everything: How Constraints Create Coherence, by Alicia Juarrero Dynamics in Action: Intentional Behavior as a Complex System, by Alicia Juarrero "Downward Causation: Polanyi and Prigogine," by Alicia Juarrero "Why Western Science and Philosophy Cannot Deal with the Relations Between Parts and Wholes," by Alicia Juarrero JRS EP105 - Christof Koch on Consciousness JRS Currents 100: Sara Walker and Lee Cronin on Time as an Object
Alicia Juarrero, Professor Emerita of Philosophy at Prince George’s Community College (MD), is the author of Dynamics in Action: Intentional Behavior as a Complex System (MIT 1999) and co-editor of Reframing Complexity: Perspectives from North and South (ISCE Publishing, 2007), and Emergence, Self-Organization and Complexity: Precursors and Prototypes (ISCE Publishing, 2008).
Jim talks with Peter Turchin about the field he founded, cliodynamics, which applies the scientific method to history. They discuss the meaning & origins of cliodynamics, distinguishing cliodynamics from previous approaches, regularizing historical data, the interface between models & data, average height as a proxy for biological well-being, the Seshat data collection project, observed patterns in collapsing societies, the overproduction of elites, relative vs absolute wage, the wealth pump, relative well-being, a top-heavy social pyramid, defining elites, failed aspirant elites as the raw material for radical movements, why lawyers are the most dangerous profession, the Musk-Zuckerman duel as a sign of increased intra-elite competition, the issue of prediction, the intensification of secessionist sentiment in the U.S., how the British Empire avoided the revolutions of 1848, shutting down the wealth pump, increasing minimum wage, the odds that a revolution would be good for society, and much more.
Episode Transcript End Times: Elites, Counter Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration, by Peter Turchin Historical Dynamics: Why States Rise and Fall, by Peter Turchin War and Peace and War: The Rise and Fall of Empires, by Peter Turchin Ultrasociety: How 10,000 Years of War Made Humans the Greatest Cooperators on Earth, by Peter Turchin The True Believer, by Eric Hoffer
Peter Turchin is a complexity scientist who works in the field of historical social science that he and his colleagues call Cliodynamics. His research interests lie at the intersection of social and cultural evolution, historical macrosociology, economic history and cliometrics, mathematical modeling of long-term social processes, and the construction and analysis of historical databases. Currently his main research effort is directing the Seshat Databank project (and its offshoot, CrisisDB) which builds and analyzes a massive historical database that enables us to empirically test predictions from theories attempting to explain why and how complex human societies evolved, and why they periodically experience political breakdown.
Jim talks with Sara Walker and Lee Cronin about the ideas in their Aeon essay "Time Is an Object." They discuss the history of the idea of time, Newton's clockwork universe, the capacity for things to happen, the impossibility of time travel, Einstein's block universe theory, making time testable, conceptions of the arrow of time, irreversibility as an emergent property, the core of assembly theory, measures of complexity, recursive deconstruction, distinguishing random & complex, Kolmogorov complexity, the absence of a useful theory of complexity, counting steps in the assembly pathway, developing theories from measurement, the size of chemical possibility space, the role of memory in the creation of large organic chemicals, memory depth, the assembly index, the origins of life, a sharp phase transition between biotic & non-biotic molecules, life as a stack of objects, a phase transition between life & technology, techno-signatures, error correction in DNA, whether assembly theory is a theory of time, the temporal dimension as a physical feature of objects, implications for SETI & the Fermi paradox, spotting the difference between noise & assembly, the Great Perceptual Filter, looking for complexity in the universe, the probability of life originating, and much more.
"Time is an object," by Sara Walker and Lee Cronin (Aeon)
JRS EP5 - Lee Smolin on Quantum Foundations and Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution
Professor Sara Walker is an astrobiologist and theoretical physicist. Her work focuses on the origins and nature of life, and in particular whether or not there are universal ‘laws of life’ that would allow predicting when life emerges and can guide our search for other examples on other worlds. Her research integrates diverse perspectives ranging from chemistry, biology, geology, astronomy and the foundations of physics, to computer science, cheminformatics, artificial life, artificial intelligence and consciousness. At Arizona State University she is Deputy Director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science, Associate Director of the ASU-Santa Fe Institute Center for Biosocial Complex Systems and Professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration. She is also a member of the External Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. She is active in public engagement in science, with appearances on "Through the Wormhole", NPR's Science Friday, and on a number of international science festivals and podcasts. She has published in leading research journals and is an internationally recognized thought leader in the study of the origins of life, alien life and the search for a deeper understanding of ourselves in our universe.
Leroy (Lee) Cronin is the Regius Professor of Chemistry in Glasgow. Since the age of 9 Lee has wanted to explore chemistry using electronics to control matter. His research spans many disciplines and has four main aims: the construction of an artificial life form; the digitization of chemistry; the use of artificial intelligence in chemistry including the construction of ‘wet’ chemical computers; the exploration of complexity and information in chemistry. His recent work on the digitization of chemistry has resulted in a new programming paradigm for matter and organic synthesis and discovery – chemputation – which uses the worlds first domain specific and universal programming language for chemistry – XDL, see XDL-standard.com. His team designs and builds all their own robots from the ground up and the team currently has 25 different robotic systems operating across four domains: Organic synthesis; Energy materials discovery; Nanomaterials discovery; Formulation discovery. All the systems use XDL and are easily programmable for both manufacture and discovery. His group is organised and assembled transparently around ideas, avoids hierarchy, and aims to mentor researchers using a problem-based approach. Nothing is impossible until it is tried.
Jim talks with Samuel Scarpino about what we've learned from Covid-19 and how to apply those lessons to preparing for the next pandemic. They discuss takeaways from cross-national comparisons, the social misery index, the failure to control the spread in the U.S., the efficacy of border closure, the test-trace-isolate strategy, what the U.S. should be ready to do in the event of the Big One, capacity for rapid test development, how universities responded in the first wave, Covid as a warning shot, local & federal coordination for pandemic preparedness, the effectiveness of ventilation, airport surveillance, wastewater surveillance, novel pathogen tests, the information chain, educating bureaucrats, leaders who can build public trust, vaccine hesitancy, overconfidence in the speed of mRNA vaccine development, the poor implementation of digital contact tracing, instating a constitutional provision for a first-class emergency, the boringness of good governance, putting vaccines in the public domain, pre-planning scenarios, how a preparedness initiative can pay for itself, and much more.
Episode Transcript JRS Currents 047: Samuel Scarpino on the Epidemiology of Covid-19
Samuel V. Scarpino, PhD, is the Director of AI + Life Sciences at the Institute for Experiential AI at Northeastern University and a Professor of the Practice in Health and Computer Sciences. He holds appointments in the Institute for Experiential AI and the Network Science, Global Resilience, and Roux Institutes. Prior to joining Northeastern in November 2022, Scarpino was the Vice President of Pathogen Surveillance at The Rockefeller Foundation and Chief Strategy Officer at Dharma Platform (a social impact, technology startup). Outside of these roles, he has over 10 years of experience translating research into decision support and data science/AI tools across diverse sectors from public health and clinical medicine to real estate and energy.
Jim talks with Damien Walter about science fiction and the mechanics of myth. They discuss the roles of pathos & ethos in science fiction, Damien's lifelong fascination with sci-fi, the symbolon of "science fiction," Star Trek vs Star Wars, categorizing Star Wars, Asimov's idea of psychohistory, The Lord of the Rings & the value of myth, the Inklings literary group, the metaphysics of Tolkien, fostering a creator culture, creating as an alternative to consumption, Jim's Script Helper program & opening the door to creativity, the collapse of status competition to money & beauty, the corporate entertainment franchise, collaborative virtual world-making, addictive games & porn, the highjacking of the red pill metaphor, Pavlovian conditioning in games, positioning between the most virtuous & the most evil, the way that evil eats itself, a book recommendation, systems novels, science fiction as philosophy fiction, the novels of Neal Stephenson, and much more.
Episode Transcript Damien Walter (website) Damien Walter (Substack) Damien Walter (Medium) The Rhetoric of Story course "The Truth of Myth: JRR Tolkien and the return of the mythos," by Damien Walter JRS EP 188 - Robert Tercek on Intellectual Property in the Time of AI The Humane Use of Human Beings, by Norbert Weiner JRS EP143 - John Vervaeke Part 1: Awakening from the Meaning Crisis JRS EP 185 - Daniel Suarez on the Near Future of Space Exploration There Is No Antimemetics Division, by qntm Termination Shock, by Neal Stephenson
Damien Walter is a writer and a storyteller who has written for The Guardian, the BBC, Wired, The Independent, Aeon, and others. He teaches The Rhetoric of Story and Writing the 21st-Century Myth to over 35,000 students worldwide, and is the host of the Science Fiction Podcast.
Jim talks with recurring guest Forrest Landry about civilization design. They discuss the meaning of the concept, toolkits for problem-solving, why this work matters now, local hill-climbing, preconditions for sustainability, cultivating an epistemic commons, non-relativistic ethics, value ethics, grounding good choices in relationship, the endurance of cities, how metaphysics provides a foundation for ethics, going beyond explore & exploit, accounting for human nature, transmission of cultural dynamics, having a complete value set, 3 dimensions of human relationship, the invention of monogamy, moving away from sexual egalitarianism, making the unconscious conscious, the balance between cooperation & competition, finding the right level of consideration, absolute & relative metrics, subsidiarity, making choices on the basis of desire, societal congruence levels, what folks should do to start building a better civilization, femoral group process, transcendental design, and much more.
Episode Transcript JRS EP31 - Forrest Landry on Building our Future JRS EP96 - Forrest Landry on Immanent Metaphysics: Part 1 JRS EP109 - Forrest Landry on Immanent Metaphysics: Part 2 JRS EP128 - Forrest Landry on Immanent Metaphysics: Part 3 JRS EP134 - Forrest Landry on Non-Relative Ethics JRS EP153 - Forrest Landry on Small Group Method JRS EP181 - Forrest Landry Part 1: AI Risk JRS EP183 - Forrest Landry Part 2: AI Risk
Forrest Landry is a philosopher, writer, researcher, scientist, engineer, craftsman, and teacher focused on metaphysics, the manner in which software applications, tools, and techniques influence the design and management of very large scale complex systems, and the thriving of all forms of life on this planet. Forrest is also the founder and CEO of Magic Flight, a third-generation master woodworker who found that he had a unique set of skills in large-scale software systems design. Which led him to work in the production of several federal classified and unclassified systems, including various FBI investigative projects, TSC, IDW, DARPA, the Library of Congress Congressional Records System, and many others.
Jim talks with Frank Lantz, game designer and director of the Game Center at New York University, about Network Wars and the art of game-making. They discuss Frank's first reaction to Network Wars, how the game works, elegance in game design, the simplest possible expression of an idea, Frank's overall score record, high stochasticity in the combat results, the combination of high skill & high variance, the tendency to bend randomness in favor of the player's instincts, learning from poker, whether there are some setups that you can't win, being rewarded for understanding the mechanics, climbing the ladder of heuristics, semi-tractable problems, how games demonstrate the world's complexity, network topology games, deterministic AIs, heuristics of Network Wars, connection games, the prisoner's dilemma, choosing not to optimize, a Presbyterian universe, the idea of live Network Wars, new games with the same underlying dynamics, the doubling cube, games that incentivize creativity, how Network Wars kept Frank sane in a difficult time, games as the art form of problem solving, the power of games to help us understand, and much more.
Episode Transcript Network Wars on the App Store Network Wars on Google Play The Beauty of Games, by Frank Lantz (forthcoming) Characteristics of Games, by Richard Garfield & Skaff Elias
Frank Lantz is a game designer with a focus on exploring emerging technology to create new kinds of gameplay. He is the Founding Chair of the NYU Game Center, the co-founder of Area/Code Games (acquired by Zynga in 2011), the co-founder of Everybody House Games and the creator of the game Universal Paperclips. He has taught game design for over 20 years at New York University, Parsons School of Design, and the School of Visual Arts and has created numerous influential talks and writings on the subject of games. His book The Beauty of Games will be published by MIT Press in October of 2023.
Jim talks with Robert Tercek about the ongoing Writers Guild of America strike and intellectual property rights in the era of generative AI. They discuss Los Angeles as a union town, Jim's screenwriting helper software, likely impacts of AI on writers, the history of Hollywood union negotiations, the devaluation of human labor & humanity, motion picture companies of the future, the suit against Stable Diffusion, whether copyright laws will present obstacles to model-building, fair use, licensing, whether AIs "copy" artifacts, knockoff Wes Anderson film trailers, AI's threat to social media influencers, the rate of progress toward text-to-video systems, why ChatGPT empowers writers in the near term, the end of copyright extensions & why shorter terms enrich the commons, the U.S. Copyright Office's guidance on non-human-generated works, the Rrol Flynn defense, the percentage of jobs destroyed each year, AI for child self-education, and much more.
Episode Transcript The Owner's Guide to the Future (Substack) The Futurists Podcast JRS EP142 - Robert Tercek on the Metaverse JRS EP139 - Robert Tercek on Education Today JRS EP133 - Robert Tercek on Digital Strategies "ScriptHelper-001: an experimental GPT-4 based Movie Script Writing Program," by Jim Rutt (Medium)
Robert Tercek is a global authority on the process of dematerialization and a digital innovation. He is an award-winning author, entrepreneur, and educator. He is highly sought as a keynote speaker at international conferences, and he is the co-host of The Futurists podcast. Tercek is the founder and CEO of General Creativity, a consulting agency that specializes in digital transformation and long-term strategic planning. Previously, he served in senior executive leadership roles at motion picture studios, television networks, and software companies, where he supervised the launch of pioneering digital services that are now used by hundreds of millions of people every day.
Jim has an extremely wide-ranging discussion with Michael Garfield. They discuss the upcoming book Michael is drafting in public, the exponential scaling of information production, Jurassic Park, mass distributed computation, a new topology for social connectivity, info agents, stereotyping & police violence, a dehumanizing pace of human interaction, Charles Stross's prophetic visions, heuristic induction, strong vs weak social links, restoration of the mesoscale, from the geographic polity to the noetic, the importance of the ground layer, semi-permeable membranes with commons inside them, Pokemon Go & behavioral control, generative AI & intellectual property, creating a commons to benefit culture, circular economies, dividend money & usury, high-temperature search, a future of childlike play, and much more.
Michael will be hosting an interactive course with Jeremy Johnson, titled "Jurassic Worlding," beginning on July 18. Those interested should keep an eye on NuraLearning.com.
Join the Jurassic Park book club and help Michael research and workshop his next book, Jurassic Worlding: A Palaeontology of The Present, at Michael's Substack.
Episode Transcript Michael Garfield on Substack Subconscious (Substack) "The Singularity In Our Past Light-Cone," by Cosma Shalizi Accelerando, by Charles Stross (free online version) "Declaration for The Independence of Cyberspace," by John Perry Barlow John Danaher Interviews Erin Neely on Augmented Reality, Ethics, and Property Rights (Algocracy and Transhumanism Podcast) "The Evolution of Surveillance," by Michael Garfield "Terra Nullius," by Cory Doctorow Future Fossils Reading List Alison Gopnik on Child Development, Elderhood, Caregiving, and A.I. (Complexity Podcast) JRS EP130 - Ken Stanley on Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned
Jim talks with Carlos Perez about the ideas in his new book A Pattern Language for Generative AI: A Self-Generating GPT-4 Blueprint. They discuss GPT-4's ability to introspect on its capabilities, Christopher Alexander's idea of a pattern language, pattern language design, Jim's script-writing program, moving beyond ChatGPT to the OpenAI API, managing the context window, chain of thought prompting, the skyhook effect, the value of using tables, creation patterns, input-output pairs, the power of examples, punctuation, cloze prompts, compressing text, the mystery of LLM capabilities, an explanation for state emulation, the system prompt, explainability patterns, meta-levels of language, procedural patterns, design thinking prompts, the idea of a GPTpedia, composite patterns, in-painting vs out-painting, corrective patterns, 6 thinking hats, attribute listing prompts, problem restatements, inverted interaction, multiple-discipline prompts, modularity patterns, ChatGPT plugins, katas & meditations, and much more. Episode Transcript A Pattern Language for Generative AI: A Self-Generating GPT-4 Blueprint, by Carlos Perez "ScriptHelper-001: an experimental GPT-4 based Movie Script Writing Program," by Jim Rutt Artificial Intuition: The Improbable Deep Learning Revolution, by Carlos Perez Deep Learning AI Playbook: Strategy for Disruptive Artificial Intelligence, by Carlos Perez Artificial Empathy: A Roadmap for Human-Aligned Artificial Intelligence, by Carlos PerezCarlos E. Perez is a seasoned software architect and developer with 30 years of experience in bringing software systems from concept to production. He has authored books on Artificial Intuition, Fluency, and Empathy, with a primary focus on applying semiotic methods in Deep Learning. Carlos holds a Master's degree in Computer Science from the University of Massachusetts and has U.S. patents in expert systems and social networks.
Jim talks with Charles Eisenstein about the environment and the ideas in his book Climate: A New Story. They discuss Charles's involvement with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s presidential campaign, his first encounter with the idea of global warming, the problems with carbon fundamentalism, environmental derangement, the importance of forests to the water cycle, a world of concrete & shit, escaping the mentality of domination, humans as a custodial species, reversing the course of separation, the healing potential of land, developments in regenerative land use, the commodification pressure of our money system, changes in consciousness, the co-evolution of consciousness & systems, diverting resources from the military to restoration, and much more. Episode Transcript Climate: A New Story, by Charles Eisenstein Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s Campaign Website JRS Currents 010: Tyson Yunkaporta on Humans As Custodial Species Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition, by Charles EisensteinCharles Eisenstein is a teacher, public speaker, and author who examines the unspoken narratives that direct our society and our lives. His work covers a wide range of topics, including the history of human civilization, consciousness, economics, spirituality, interdependence, ecology, and how myth and story influence culture. He is the author of The More Beautiful World our Hearts Know is Possible, Sacred Economics, and The Ascent of Humanity.
Jim talks with Matt Welsh about the ideas in his essay "The End of Programming," arguing that coding as we know it will soon be obsolete. They discuss ChatGPT's ability to perform logical reasoning, whether it thinks, its utility as a programming aid, skipping code entirely, using language models as computational engines, problem decomposition, streamlining the interface between models and databases, complex customer service, the accessibility of fine-tuning, Jim's LLM scriptwriting project, custom hardware for language models, learning to speak with aliens, democratizing computing abilities, moral conundrums & value-laden choices, training introspection, avoiding an erosion of trust, short-term opportunities for small dev teams, advice for recent college grads, and much more. Episode Transcript "The End of Programming," by Matt Welsh (Communications of the ACM) Fixie.ai Etched.ai GitHub CopilotMatt Welsh is CEO and Co-Founder at Fixie.ai, a startup building a new computing platform based on Large Language Models. Prior to Fixie, Matt was the SVP of Engineering at OctoML, and spent time as an engineering leader at Apple, Xnor.ai, and Google. He was previously a Professor of Computer Science at Harvard, and did his PhD in Computer Science at UC Berkeley.
Jim talks with Matthew Pirkowski about the kinds of consensus mechanisms that can be used to secure blockchains. They discuss active inference, proof of work vs proof of stake & the relationship between them, auto-catalytic networks, proof of work in emergent nature, what consensus means & why it needs to be protected, integrity of the ledger, an analogy with clocks, accelerating entropy, photosynthesis, exploring vs exploiting tensions in emergent systems, coordinating central points of reference, energetic openness, the relationship between energy & information, resistance to manipulation, postmodernity & symbols untethered to reality, the evolution of evolvability, adaptive drift, a stable foundation for building infrastructure, the tight relationship between information theory & thermodynamics, whether existing cryptocurrencies exist in a Goldilocks zone vs an arbitrary spot in design space, bugs of global reserve currencies, whether investing in Bitcoin is an anti-social act, currency vs wealth, personal stores of abstract potential energy, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS Currents 066: Matthew Pirkowski on Emergence in Possibility Space "Dividend Money: An Alternative to Central Banker Managed Fractional Reserve Banking Money," by Jim Rutt (lecture)Matthew Pirkowski works at the intersection of software, psychology, and complex systems. These interests first took root while studying Evolutionary Psychology and assisting with Behavioral Economic research at Yale’s Comparative Cognition Laboratory. From there Matthew began a career in software engineering, where he applied these interests to the development of software interfaces used by millions around the world, most notably as a member of Netflix’s Television UI team, where he worked on experimental initiatives conceptualizing and prototyping the future of entertainment software. Presently, Matthew consults on systems architecture, advises companies within the startup space, and writes about topics related to the evolution of human socioeconomic, technological, and representational systems–in particular the emergence and impact of cryptoeconomic protocols, as outlined in his Crypto Beyond Capitalism essay series. He spends most of his free time maintaining, restoring, and growing food on 6 recently acquired acres of Oregon woodlands.
Jim talks with Rafe Kelley about the parkour-based movement system he created and teaches, Evolve Move Play. They discuss electromagnetic pulses, combining parkour & martial arts, the importance of nature exploration for children, the historical roots of parkour, using limbs to overcome obstacles, what makes parkour natural, rough play as an antidote to infantilization, healthy play culture, humans as arboreal animals, the quantification of extreme sports, love & amateurism, ekstasis, building selves worth esteeming, the professionalization of sexuality, dangers of AI porn, building alternative communities, building virtues, values, and norms, EMP as virtue development, parkour as an exemplar of GameB, procedural, perspectival, and participatory knowing, the embodiment of virtue, music & community-building, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS Currents 010: Tyson Yunkaporta on Humans As Custodial Species Sand Talk, by Tyson Yunkaporta Rafe Kelley - TreeRunner (YouTube) Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, by James C. ScottRafe Kelley is the creator of the Evolve Move Play method. A method incorporealatoring elements of play, natural parkour [treerunning], rough-housing, movement games, athletic development, body integrity and antifragility practices for resilience, working with fear and its repatterning, rewilding, ecological knowledge and anthropology, systems theory and motor learning perspectives of skill acquisition. Besides the personal physical feats of high degree and the hard work of art formation involved in EMP, Rafe is passionate about community fostering. He has created what is one of the best movement and related fields podcasts to these ends; and hosts retreats to foster human connection on top of many workshops taught.
Jim talks with Peter Wang about his idea that meaning comes from making consequential choices. They discuss the immediacy of consequences, the modeling of causal loops, the subjective aspect of causality, two hundred varieties of shampoo, the intersubjective realm, middle-class consumer culture, the desire to be a live player, examples from Succession and Mad Men, the manufacture & commodification of desire, alternative systems of meaning, levels of patterns, false consequence, atomized individualism & the roots of the meaning crisis, the Ruttian meaning of life, negative vs positive freedom, Krishnamurti's choiceless awareness, the new ability to create networked tribes, the liminal, clockwork oranges, facing the Hofstadter terror, taking our place in the mandala of the universe, and much more. "Meaning of Life" - Peter Wang on the Lex Fridman Podcast JRS EP16 - Anaconda CTO Peter Wang on The Distributed Internet JRS EP143 - John Vervaeke Part 1: Awakening from the Meaning Crisis "Freedom 2.0 / Towards a New Physics of Human Systems," by Peter Wang Mental Models w/ Peter Wang - The Stoa series The Gervais Principle, by Venkatesh G. Rao Krishnamurti's Core Teachings A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony BurgessPeter Wang is the co-founder and CEO of Anaconda and one of the most impactful leaders and developers in the Python community. He is also a physicist and philosopher.
Jim talks with Bruce Damer about genius and the use of psychedelics for creative thinking. They discuss the roots of genius, the discovery of fire, Einstein's four great discoveries, building blocks of genius, endotripping vs exotripping, set, setting, & setup, the danger of over-relying on LLMs for knowledge, geniuses in the scanner, crosstalk in the brain, the prepared mind, Bruce's lifelong experience of endotripping, rapid retripping, lucid dreaming, getting psilocybin from Terence McKenna, ayahuasca, Steve Jobs's LSD experience, external constraints, Bruce's epiphany about the origins of life, hypothesizing as a non-rational process, the stoned ape theory, psychedelics in Eleusis, human brain sizes & assisted birth, hypnagogic trip states, casualties of the early psychedelic era, a call for serious practitioners, a proposal for string theorists, Charles Manson & the importance of screening for wisdom, the increasing need for genius, and much more. Episode Transcript Bruce Damer (personal website) The BIOTA Institute JRS EP 167 - Bruce Damer on the Origins of Life JRS EP 171 - Bruce Damer Part 2: The Origins of Life – Implications Lucid NewsCanadian-born Dr. Bruce Damer has spent his life pursuing two questions: how did life on Earth begin? and how can we give that life (and ourselves) a sustainable pathway into the future and a presence beyond the Earth? A decade of laboratory and field research with his collaborator Prof. David Deamer at UCSC and teams around the world resulted in the Hot Spring Hypothesis for an Origin of Life, published in Scientific American in 2017 and the journal Astrobiology in 2020. The scenario has now passed its first key experimental tests in the laboratory and at volcanic hot springs around the world and has emerged as a leading contender for a general theory of abiogenesis. Implications of the work are now spreading through evolutionary biology, philosophy, AI and the search for life beyond Earth. New work with collaborators has proposed the urability framework, how life can start on many different worlds, and addresses some aspects of the Fermi Paradox.
Jim talks with Daniel Suarez about his science-fiction imaginings in the near future of space exploration, Delta-V and Critical Mass. They discuss the inspiration for the novels, the beginning of a renaissance in private space exploration, characters in the series, space law, choice-making at the beginning, the nature of explorers, the research process, a frontier economy, experiments with money systems, the Age of Exploration, the debate over asteroid mining, robots vs humans in space missions, speed of light lags, the meaning of delta-V, the nexus of Luxembourg City, carbonyl metallurgy, climate change & economic disruptions, mining operations on the moon, the Shackleton crater, how space exploration is of benefit to Earth, space station design, space-based solar energy, cryptocurrency on the moon, money vs wealth, bringing the universe to life, the responsibility of stewardship, the minimum dose of gravity, and much more. Episode Transcript Delta-V, by Daniel Suarez Critical Mass, by Daniel Suarez "Dividend Money: An Alternative to Central Banker Managed Fractional Reserve Banking Money, "by Jim Rutt (lecture) A Monetary History of the United States 1867-1960, by Milton Friedman The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space, by Gerard K. O'NeillDaniel Suarez is a New York Times bestselling author, TEDGlobal speaker, and former systems analyst whose unique brand of high-tech fiction explores the causes and impacts of rapid technological change. The author of seven novels, he has a track record of anticipating what's next, and his latest book, Critical Mass brings readers on a daring journey to the new frontier of private space exploration. Second book in the Delta-v series, Critical Mass realistically portrays humanity's urgent transition from an Earthbound to a spacefaring civilization -- and brings home why that's critical to our future.
Jim talks with Dave Snowden about the document he co-authored, "Managing Complexity (And Chaos) In Times of Crisis." They discuss the Cynefin framework, its development into a complexity-informed framework, distinguishing complex from complicated, emergence, enabling constraints vs governing constraints, openness in complex systems, short-term teleology vs top-down causality, lines of flight, six sigma, Taylorism, distributed decision-making, the meaning of crisis, preparing for unknowable unknowns, plagues & heat deaths, false learnings of Covid, the order of origin of language & semiotics, building informal networks, exaptation, the right level of granularity, setting Draconian constraints, preserving optionality, anticipatory thinking, comprehensive journaling, LLMs & the recent open letter, the need for ethical awareness, scales of group decision-making, documenters & doers, the aporetic, Covid as a boon to complexity work, cadence vs velocity, ritual in American football, designing strategic interventions with stories, vector theory of change, constructor theory, making the cost of virtue less than the cost of sin, dispositional management, an upcoming book, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS EP11 - Dave Snowden and Systems Thinking "Managing complexity (and chaos) in times of crisis," by Dave Snowden and others The Emergence of Everything: How the World Became Complex, by Harold J. Morowitz JRS EP138 - W. Brian Arthur on the Nature of Technology JRS EP143 - John Vervaeke Part 1: Awakening from the Meaning CrisisDave Snowden divides his time between two roles: founder Chief Scientific Officer of Cognitive Edge and the founder and Director of the Centre for Applied Complexity at the University of Wales. His work is international in nature and covers government and industry looking at complex issues relating to strategy, organisational decision making and decision making. He has pioneered a science based approach to organisations drawing on anthropology, neuroscience and complex adaptive systems theory. He is a popular and passionate keynote speaker on a range of subjects, and is well known for his pragmatic cynicism and iconoclastic style.
Jim talks with BJ Campbell and Patrick Ryan about understanding the present moment through the concept of egregores. They discuss the meaning of the term, its roots in early occultism, social media as the fertile ground, an analogy with neural nets, measuring egregores with grammar velocity, LLMs as a Broca's area for tech, how guns have won the culture war, translating word frequency distributions into psychological profiles, one grand egregore vs multiple competitive egregores, NPC speedrunning, experiments in influence automation, QAnon & piggybacking on reality, egregore update rates, Shiri's scissor, LLMs as necromancy, multipolar traps, the impedance matching problem, an apex predator egregore, and much more. Episode Transcript Handwaving Freakoutery (Substack) JRS Currents 024: BJ Campbell on the Woke Religion "Sort by Controversial," by Scott AlexanderBJ Campbell is a licensed professional civil engineer and practicing hydrologist who consults in the land development and environmental industries. In addition to his Substack Handwaving Freakoutery, he writes for Open Source Defense, Quillette, and Recoil Magazine.Patrick Ryan is a seasoned programmer with over 20 years of experience in the full web stack development field, a career which concluded at Hulu. He is also an AI warfare specialist and provided valuable assistance to Zach Vorheis, a Google whistleblower, during the Department of Justice's anti-trust case against Google. His knowledge and experience are sought after by diverse organizations, including defense, think tanks, and policy outfits. He has provided guidance on measuring existential risk where AI warfare and infrastructure weakness intersect, as well as for a White House Coronavirus Task force.
Jim talks with Erik Torenberg about the ideas in his Substack series on navigating the status games of today. They discuss status as reputation allocation, cyclical change in status mobility over time, status in the world of social media, beliefs as fashions, the status games of adolescent girls, therapy as a status signal, status games around changes of gender, the metaphysics of trauma, luxury beliefs, college as the biggest differentiator in belief, universalism & the ban on cousin marriage, the U.S.'s anomalously high religious population, the arms race for crazy ideas, the societal value of status mobility, sincere irony, the Israeli kibbutz system, cryptocurrency initiatives in GameB, the religion that's not a religion, money & beauty, heretics vs apostates, cancel culture as a status pump-and-dump scheme, the peak & coming decline of wokism, Trump as a boon for wokism, and much more. Episode Transcript Game B, Liquid Democracy, and Complex Systems with Jim Rutt - Village Global's Venture Stories "Status, Vulnerability, and Status Vulnerability," by Erik Torenberg (Substack) "Beliefs are Fashions," by Erik Torenberg (Substack) The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous, by Joseph Henrich JRS EP104 - Joe Henrich on WEIRD PeopleErik Torenberg is the Founder and the Co-founder/General Partner at Village Global. Before building On Deck, Erik was a member of the founding team at Product Hunt and the Founder of rapt.fm.
Jim continues his conversation with recurring guest Forrest Landry on his arguments that continued AI development poses certain catastrophic risk to humanity. They discuss the liminal feeling of the current moment in AI, Rice's theorem & the unknowability of alignment, the analogy & disanalogy of bridge-building, external ensemble testing, the emergence of a feedback curve, the danger of replacing human oversight with machine oversight, Eliezer Yudkowsky's AI risk work, instrumental convergence risk, inequity issues, deepening multipolar traps, substrate needs convergence, environmental degradation, developing collective choice-making among humans, economic decoupling, the Luddite movement, fully automated luxury communism, the calculation problem, the principal-agent problem, corruption, agency through autonomous military devices, implicit agency, institutional design, the need for caring, hierarchy & transaction, care relationships at scale, using tech to correct the damages of tech, love as that which enables choice, institutions vs communities, techniques of discernment, enlivenment, empowering the periphery, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS EP 181 - Forrest Landry Part 1: AI RiskForrest Landry is a philosopher, writer, researcher, scientist, engineer, craftsman, and teacher focused on metaphysics, the manner in which software applications, tools, and techniques influence the design and management of very large scale complex systems, and the thriving of all forms of life on this planet. Forrest is also the founder and CEO of Magic Flight, a third-generation master woodworker who found that he had a unique set of skills in large-scale software systems design. Which led him to work in the production of several federal classified and unclassified systems, including various FBI investigative projects, TSC, IDW, DARPA, the Library of Congress Congressional Records System, and many others.
Jim talks with Melanie Mitchell about her critique of applying standardized exams to LLMs and the debate over understanding in AI. They discuss ChatGPT and GPT-4's performance on standardized exams, questioning the underlying assumptions, OpenAI's lack of transparency, soon-to-be-released open-source LLMs, prompt engineering, making GPT its own skyhook to reduce hallucinations, the number of parameters in GPT-4, why LLMs should be probed differently than humans, how LLMs lie differently than humans, Stanford's holistic assessment for LLMs, a College Board for LLMs, why the term "understanding" is overstressed today, consciousness vs intelligence, the human drive for compression, working memory limitations as the secret to human intellectual abilities, episodic memory, embodied emotions, the idea that AIs don't care, calling for a new science of intelligence, the effects of differing evolutionary pressures, whether a model of physics could emerge from language learning, how little we understand these systems, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS Currents 036: Melanie Mitchell on Why AI is Hard Complexity: A Guided Tour, by Melanie Mitchell Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans, by Melanie Mitchell AI: A Guide for Thinking Humans (Substack) "Did ChatGPT Really Pass Graduate-Level Exams?" (Part 1), by Melanie Mitchell Currents 087: Shivanshu Purohit on Open-Source Generative AI Holistic Evaluation of Language Models (HELM) - Stanford "The Debate Over Understanding in AI's Large Language Models," by Melanie Mitchell and David KrakauerMelanie Mitchell is Professor of Computer Science at Portland State University, and External Professor and Co-Chair of the Science Board at the Santa Fe Institute. Mitchell has also held faculty or professional positions at the University of Michigan, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the OGI School of Science and Engineering. She is the author or editor of seven books and numerous scholarly papers in the fields of artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and complex systems, including her latest, Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans.
Jim talks with Brad DeLong about his book Slouching Toward Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century. They discuss how everything changed around 1870, the idea of a polycrisis, Friedrich von Hayek's affirmation of the market system, the calculation problem, Karl Polanyi's response, a quantitative index of technological knowledge, the pace of growth, the necessity of a grand narrative, Malthusianism, the lead-up to the Industrial Revolution, the invention of the industrial research lab, the Edison-Tesla fight, science as an institution, the transition away from force & fraud dominance, theories about the rise of global empires, communities of engineering practice, causes of World War I, Max Weber's German chauvinism, 30 glorious years of social democracy, the Macintosh launch commercial & the neoliberal turn, the evaporation of cultural conservatism, the liminal age, and much more. Episode Transcript Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century, by Brad DeLong Local And Global Networks Of Immigrant Professionals In Silicon Valley, by AnnaLee SaxenianBrad DeLong is a professor of economics at the University of California at Berkeley. He was a deputy assistant secretary for economic policy at the U.S. Treasury during the Clinton Administration. He is a New York Times instant bestselling author, for Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century, which was called: “magisterial” by Paul Krugman, "required reading” by Larry Summers, “immense scope and depth” by Diane Coyle, and “impressive… written with wit and style and a formidable command of detail” by Ryan Avent. He has been too online since 1995, now in the form of a SubStack, formerly at TypePad.
Jim talks with Shivanshu Purohit about the world of open-source AI models and a significant open-source LLM coming soon from Stability AI and EleutherAI. They discuss the reasons for creating open-source models, the release of Facebook's LLaMA model, the black box nature of current models, the scientific mystery of how they really work, an opportunity for liberal arts majors, OpenAI's new plugin architecture, the analogy of the PC business around 1981, creating GPT-Neo & GPT-NeoX, the balance between data & architecture, the number of parameters in GPT-4, order of training's non-effect on memorization, phase changes due to scaling, Stability AI and EleutherAI's new collaboration & its specs, tradeoffs in price & size, the question of guardrails, reinforcement learning from human feedback, the missing economic model of generative AI, necessary hardware for the new suite, OpenAI's decreasing openness, Jim's commitment to help fund an open-source reinforcement learning dataset, the status of GPT-5 & other coming developments, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS Currents 038: Connor Leahy on Artificial Intelligence JRS Currents 033: Connor Leahy on Deep Learning ChatGPT Plugins DocumentationShivanshu Purohit is head of engineering at Eleuther AI and a research engineer at Stability AI, the creators of Stable Diffusion.
Jim talks with recurring guest Forrest Landry about his arguments that continued AI development poses certain catastrophic risk to humanity. They discuss AI versus advanced planning systems (APS), the release of GPT-4, emergent intelligence from modest components, whether deep learning alone will produce AGI, Rice's theorem & the impossibility of predicting alignment, the likelihood that humans try to generalize AI, why the upside of AGI is an illusion, agency vs intelligence, instrumental convergence, implicit agency, deterministic chaos, theories of physics as theories of measurement, the relationship between human desire and AI tools, an analogy with human-animal relations, recognizing & avoiding multipolar traps, an environment increasingly hostile to humans, technology & toxicity, short-term vs long-term risks, why there's so much disagreement about AI risk, the substrate needs hypothesis, an inexorable long-term convergence process, why the only solution is avoiding the cycle, a boiling frog scenario, the displacement of humans, the necessity of understanding evolution, economic decoupling, non-transactional choices, the Forward Great Filter answer to the Fermi paradox, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS EP 153 - Forrest Landry on Small Group Method Forrest Landry on Twitter JRS Currents 072: Ben Goertzel on Viable Paths to True AGI JRS EP25 - Gary Marcus on Rebooting AI JRS Currents 036: Melanie Mitchell on Why AI is Hard EP137 Ken Stanley on Neuroevolution "Why I Am Not (As Much Of) A Doomer (As Some People)," by Scott AlexanderForrest Landry is a philosopher, writer, researcher, scientist, engineer, craftsman, and teacher focused on metaphysics, the manner in which software applications, tools, and techniques influence the design and management of very large scale complex systems, and the thriving of all forms of life on this planet. Forrest is also the founder and CEO of Magic Flight, a third-generation master woodworker who found that he had a unique set of skills in large-scale software systems design. Which led him to work in the production of several federal classified and unclassified systems, including various FBI investigative projects, TSC, IDW, DARPA, the Library of Congress Congressional Records System, and many others.
Jim talks with Monica Anderson about her paper "Bubble City Design Proposal: A Twitter Alternative Which Is Not a Social Medium." They discuss the origins of the Bubble City idea, its architecture, quenching the flood of social media information, only seeing the messages you want, research bots, the difference between a bubble and a Slack channel, fine-tuning bubbles, law enforcement, filtering, the place of curators, federating feeds into the system, how the system supports itself financially, how identity is handled, viscosity, the Pacer speed control, the clickbait problem, trusted streams, Google Wave, how LLMs are changing programming, version changes to Bubble City, Understanding Machine One, a call for fundraising, and much more. Episode Transcript "Bubble City Design Proposal: A Twitter Alternative Which Is Not a Social Medium," by Monica Anderson Experimental EpistemologyMonica Anderson is an independent AI researcher and ex-Googler operating from Silicon Valley. Her company Syntience, Inc. has researched computer-based Natural Language Understanding since Jan 1, 2001.
Jim has a wide-ranging conversation with Jonny Miller about self-development and emotional resilience. They discuss being a natural human, self-help as deconditioning, self-unfoldment, ecologies of practices, giving power back to the individual, Jamie Wheal's hedonic engineering, pushing outside the window of tolerance, emotional anti-fragility, facilitated breath patterning, affirming anger, principles of decision-making, decision paralysis, self-destructive patterns in relationships, common barriers to communication, surrendering to grief, conditions of play, preserving unscheduled time, critiquing "mental health," the importance & decline of friendship, sparring in schools, the resistance to unproductive activity, video games & disembodiment, the Nervous System Mastery course, and much more. Episode Transcript Nervous System Mastery Course JRS EP123 - Jamie Wheal on Recapturing the Rapture Curious Humans with Jonny Miller - Jamie Wheal on The Meaning Crisis, Hedonic Engineering & Forging a Culture of Post-Traumatic Growth Art of Accomplishment Podcast with Joe Hudson JRS EP148 - Antonio Damasio on Feeling and Knowing The Journey of Soul Initiation: A Field Guide for Visionaries, Evolutionaries, and Revolutionaries, by Bill PlotkinJonny Miller is a Nervous System Specialist and host of the Curious Humans podcast. He’s spent cumulatively thousands of hours researching, training & mentoring high-performers and professionals — from the CEO of a rocket ship company to startup founders recovering from burnout as well as busy parents, early-stage solopreneurs & school-teachers.
Jim talks with Mirta Galesic about the ideas in her co-authored paper "Stewardship of Global Collective Behavior." They discuss the meaning of collective behavior, a crisis in network structures, the analogy of the printing press, consequences of person-to-person communication, the capacity for collective forgetting, unpredictable developments in chatbots, bottom-up vs top-down influence, advertising-driven information ecosystems, emergent knobs in social media design, ChatGPT's political bias, the widespread trust in algorithms, suggestions for reforming Twitter, information decay, viscosity, opportunities & dangers of mass surveillance data, the Twitter Files, free speech & cultural evolution, and much more. Episode Transcript "Stewardship of Global Collective Behavior," by Mirta Galesic et al. "Beyond collective intelligence: Collective adaptation," by Mirta Galesic et al. "Collective moderation of hate, toxicity, and extremity in online discussions," by Mirta Galesic et al. The Jim Rutt Show Chatbot "Musk and Moderation," by Jim RuttMirta Galesic is a Professor at the Santa Fe Institute and External Faculty at the Complexity Science Hub in Vienna, Austria, as well as the Vermont Complex Systems Center, UVM. She is also an Associate Researcher at the Harding Center for Risk Literacy and a non-resident system thinking expert at the United States Institute of Peace. She studies how simple cognitive mechanisms interact with social and physical environments to produce seemingly complex social phenomena. Her projects focus on developing empirically grounded computational models of social judgments, social learning, collective problem solving, and opinion dynamics. She is also interested in how people understand and cope with the uncertainty and complexity inherent in many everyday decisions.
Jim talks with Lynne Kiesling about the electrical grid and what could and should change in its architecture in the years to come. They discuss electricity as a product, the move away from centralized control rooms, energy storage as the holy grail, base load vs peak load, distributed & intermittent energy resources, moving power to & from the grid, temporal patterns of supply & usage, varying demand to meet supply, programming thermostats, digitization of the electric grid, how rooftop solar systems coordinate with the grid, distributed energy resource management systems, advancements in storage, cyberattacks & solar flares, the Transactive Energy Service System (TESS), machine learning in energy bidding, the challenge of testing complex systems, the Olympic Peninsula Testbed Project, responding to events like the Great Texas Freeze of 2021, institutional design in a new technological landscape, wholesale power generation, power law distributions, and much more. Transactive Energy Service System (TESS) JRS EP90 - Joshua Epstein on Agent-Based ModelingLynne Kiesling is an economist focusing on regulation, market design, and the economics of digitization and smart grid technologies in the electricity industry. She is a Research Professor in the School of Engineering, Design and Computing at the University of Colorado-Denver, and Co-Director of the Institute for Regulatory Law & Economics. Lynne also provides advisory and analytical services as the President of Knowledge Problem LLC, and is an Adjunct Professor in the Masters of Science in Energy and Sustainability program at Northwestern University. In addition to her academic research, she is currently a member of the U.S. Department of Energy's Electricity Advisory Committee, has served as a member of the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Smart Grid Advisory Committee, and is an emerita member of the GridWise Architecture Council. Her academic background includes a B.S. in Economics from Miami University (Ohio) and a Ph.D. in Economics from Northwestern University.
Jim talks with Joscha Bach about current and future developments in the generative AI space. They discuss the skepticism of the press, small productive applications, questions about intellectual property rights, confabulation in human thinking, nanny rails, 3 approaches to AI alignment, Aquinas's 7 virtues, issues of consciousness-like agency, love as an answer to the alignment problem, the difficulty with fairness, serving shared sacredness, dealing with entropy, integrated information theory & its incompatibility with the Church-Turing thesis, neural Darwinism, a point where extrapolation & interpolation become the same, building an AI artist, free will, the capacity of human memory, consciousness as a conductor, the scaling hypothesis in AGI, making the system learn from its own thoughts, computation as a rewrite system, neurons as animals, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS EP72 - Joscha Bach on Minds, Machines & Magic JRS EP87 - Joscha Bach on Theories of Consciousness JRS EP 178 - Anil Seth on A New Science of Consciousness JRS EP108 - Bernard Baars on Consciousness JRS EP105 - Christof Koch on Consciousness JRS Currents 072: Ben Goertzel on Viable Paths to True AGI JRS EP137 - Ken Stanley on NeuroevolutionJoscha Bach is a cognitive scientist working for MIT Media Lab and the Harvard Program for Evolutionary Dynamics. He earned his Ph.D. in cognitive science from the University of Osnabrück, Germany, and has built computational models of motivated decision making, perception, categorization, and concept-formation. He is especially interested in the philosophy of AI and in the augmentation of the human mind.
Jim talks with Gregg Henriques in the third and final part of a series on his book A New Synthesis for Solving the Problem of Psychology: Addressing the Enlightenment Gap. They discuss the concept of justification, replacing "justice" with "justification," behavioral investment theory, John Vervaeke's recursive relevance realization, 6 principles of animal mindedness, making a living, animals as functional behavioral investors, evolution of mental behavior in 4 stages, the P − M => E learning control theory, emotion vs valence, framing an architecture of human mind, layers of working memory, 3 types of mind, what it is like to be, the 2-step model of consciousness, the Aristotelian soul, integrated information theory, global worskpace theory, the unknown mechanisms of neurocognitive causation, Unified Theory of Knowledge, the influence matrix, Vervaeke's 4P/3R meta-theory, integrating independent meta-theories, Timothy Leary's interpersonal circumplex, the origin of gender roles, the 5-part map of mind, what a person is, JII (justification, influence, influence) dynamics & the unconscious, 4 functional contexts of justification, bullshit as a problem of social epistemology, evolution of the culture-person plane, whether post-modernism is really an epoch, the entire structure in recap, and much more.Listeners may be interested to know that Gregg is organizing a conference. Consistent with his book, it is called Consilience: Unifying Knowledge and Orienting Toward a Wisdom Commons. It will be held online March 17 and 18th. It is a Zoom event, and free to the public. Jim will be talking about Game B, and will be joined by Jordan Hall. John Vervaeke will give the keynote. And there will be over 40 presentations by many folks who have been featured on the Jim Rutt Show. Links below: Register for the conference. UTOK Conference 2023 – Clip Conference FlyerEpisode Links: JRS EP105 - Christof Koch on Consciousness JRS EP108 - Bernard Baars on Consciousness Consciousness Explained, by Daniel Dennett JRS EP143 - John Vervaeke Part 1: Awakening from the Meaning Crisis The Elusive I - Part 1 - The Cognitive Science Show (YouTube) Different: Gender Through the Eyes of a Primatologist, by Frans de WaalDr. Gregg Henriques is Professor of Graduate Psychology at James Madison University in the Combined Doctoral Program in Clinical and School Psychology. He received his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Vermont and did his post-doctoral training at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a theoretical psychologist and has developed the “Unified Theory of Knowledge,” which is a consilient scientific humanistic worldview to unify psychology. He is the author of A New Unified Theory of Psychology (Springer, 2011), and A New Synthesis for Solving the Problem of Psychology: Addressing the Enlightenment Gap (Palgrave McMillian, November 2022). His scholarly work has been published in the field’s best journals, and he has developed a popular blog on Psychology Today, Theory of Knowledge, which has received over eight million views. He is a fellow of the American Psychological Association, the 2022 President of the Society for the Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration, and founded the Theory of Knowledge academic society.
Jim talks with Dan Shipper about practical uses of GPT-3 and ChatGPT at the personal scale. They discuss how Dan started playing with these tools, the feeling of new generative AIs, GPT-3 vs ChatGPT, writing a screenplay using ChatGPT, using GPT-3 to analyze journal entries, circumventing the context window limitation, GPT-3 as a journaling tool, how ChatGPT does embedding, the coming market for chatbot personas, the value of guardrails, the monetary cost of using GPT-3, solving the organizational problems of note-taking, Stephen Reid's knowledge-graph of this podcast, the invention of the graphic web browser & the frozen accidents of HTTP & HTML, meta-prompts & data pipelines, how Yohei Nakajima eliminates repetitive tasks using LLMs, and much more. Episode Transcript Chain of Thought (Every) "Can GPT-3 Explain My Past and Tell My Future?", by Dan Shipper GPT Index LangChain "Chat GPT 'DAN' (and other 'Jailbreaks')" Character.AI JRS Knowledgegraph, by Stephen ReidDan Shipper is the CEO and co-founder of Every, a daily newsletter on business, AI, and personal development read by almost 75,000 founders, operators, and investors. Previously he was the CEO and co-founder of Firefly, an enterprise software company that he sold to Pegasystems. He writes a weekly at column at Every called Chain of Thought where he covers AI, tools for thought, and the psychology of work.
Jim talks with Anil Seth about his book Being You: A New Science of Consciousness. They discuss the curious non-experience of general anesthesia, defining consciousness, the difference between consciousness & intelligence, experiential vs functional aspects, the hard problem vs the real problem, measuring consciousness, consciousness vs wakefulness, Lempel-Ziv complexity, zap & zip, consciousness as multidimensional, psychedelic states of consciousness, integrated information theory & phi, Scott Aaronson's expander grids, quantum IIT, accounting for conscious contents, the Bayesian brain, paying attention, Adelson's checkerboard, the perception census, prediction error minimization, active inference, the two bridges experiment, aspects of self, the rubber hand illusion, somatoparaphrenia, separating self from personal identity, whether advanced mammals have personal identity, being a beast machine, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS EP97 - Emery Brown on Consciousness & Anesthesia JRS EP148 - Antonio Damasio on Feeling and Knowing The Perception CensusAnil Seth is Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex, Co-Director of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research Program on Brain, Mind and Consciousness, a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Investigator, and Editor-in-Chief of the academic journal Neuroscience of Consciousness (Oxford University Press). With more than two decades of research and outreach experience, Anil’s mission is to advance the science of consciousness and to use its insights for the benefit of society, technology and medicine. An internationally leading researcher, Anil is also a renowned public speaker, best-selling author, and sought-after collaborator on high-profile art-science projects.
Jim talks with Gregg Henriques in part two of a series on his book A New Synthesis for Solving the Problem of Psychology: Addressing the Enlightenment Gap. They discuss limitations of the standard natural science perspective, the enlightenment gap, BM3, mental behaviorism, justification systems theory, discovering the tree of knowledge system, the evolution of complexification, the emergence of mindedness, resolving a contradiction between Freud & Skinner, the periodic table of behavior, 3 branches of psychology, the history of information processing, the unworkability of Cartesian dualism, top-down causation, Lawrence Cahoone's systematic metaphysics, distinguishing physicalism & naturalism, behavior as the central concept of the natural sciences, complicated vs complex, Chalmers's hard problem, cybernetics & the cognitive science revolution, 4E cognitive science, internal talk & individual variation, and much more.Listeners may be interested to know that Gregg is organizing a conference. Consistent with his book, it is called Consilience: Unifying Knowledge and Orienting Toward a Wisdom Commons. It will be held online March 17 and 18th. It is a Zoom event, and free to the public. Jim will be talking about Game B, and will be joined by Jordan Hall. John Vervaeke will give the keynote. And there will be over 40 presentations by many folks who have been featured on the Jim Rutt Show. Links below: Register for the conference. UTOK Conference 2023 - Clip Conference FlyerEpisode Links: Episode Transcript JRS EP 176 - Gregg Henriques Part 1: Addressing the Enlightenment Gap The Emergence of Everything: How the World Became Complex, by Harold Morowitz The Orders of Nature, by Lawrence E. CahooneDr. Gregg Henriques is Professor of Graduate Psychology at James Madison University in the Combined Doctoral Program in Clinical and School Psychology. He received his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Vermont and did his post-doctoral training at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a theoretical psychologist and has developed the “Unified Theory of Knowledge,” which is a consilient scientific humanistic worldview to unify psychology. He is the author of A New Unified Theory of Psychology (Springer, 2011), and A New Synthesis for Solving the Problem of Psychology: Addressing the Enlightenment Gap (Palgrave McMillian, November 2022). His scholarly work has been published in the field’s best journals, and he has developed a popular blog on Psychology Today, Theory of Knowledge, which has received over eight million views. He is a fellow of the American Psychological Association, the 2022 President of the Society for the Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration, and founded the Theory of Knowledge academic society.
Jim talks with Gregg Henriques about his book A New Synthesis for Solving the Problem of Psychology: Addressing the Enlightenment Gap. They discuss the book's audacious attempt to explain the universe, definitions of metaphysics & whether it's needed, 4 bins for the history of the universe, the tree of knowledge system, psychology's ontological confusion, the Enlightenment gap, one-world naturalism & the mind-body problem, scientific knowledge's relationship with subjective knowledge, the metamodernist synthesis, psychology's disagreement about its own building blocks, the absence of a meta-paradigm, John Vervaeke's recursive relevance realization, definitions of mind, empiricism, mapping the internal/external relationship, the unified theory of knowledge, the meaning of biopsychosocial, 3 meanings of mind, Global Workspace Theory, justification systems theory, question-answer dynamics, positive & negative space in communication, justification dynamics, motivated reasoning, and much more.Listeners may be interested to know that Gregg is organizing a conference. Consistent with his book, it is called Consilience: Unifying Knowledge and Orienting Toward a Wisdom Commons. It will be held online March 17 and 18th. It is a Zoom event, and free to the public. Jim will be talking about Game B, and will be joined by Jordan Hall. John Vervaeke will give the keynote. And there will be over 40 presentations by many folks who have been featured on the Jim Rutt Show. Links below: Register for the conference. UTOK Conference 2023 - Clip Conference FlyerEpisode Links Episode Transcript A New Synthesis for Solving the Problem of Psychology: Addressing the Enlightenment Gap, by Gregg Henriques JRS EP59 - Gregg Henriques on Unifying Psychology JRS Currents 009: Gregg Henriques on Theory Of Meta-Cultural Transition JRS EP116 - Doug Erwin on the Cambrian Explosion JRS EP 172 - Brendan Graham Dempsey on Emergentism The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, by Thomas S. Kuhn JRS EP143 - John Vervaeke Part 1: Awakening from the Meaning Crisis JRS EP108 - Bernard Baars on Consciousness JRS EP 159 - Bobby Azarian on the Romance of Reality The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain, by Terrence W. Deacon Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts, by Carol Tavris & Elliot Aronson The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, by Jonathan Haidt Ego Defenses And The Legitimation Of Behavior, by Guy E. SwansonDr. Gregg Henriques is Professor of Graduate Psychology at James Madison University in the Combined Doctoral Program in Clinical and School Psychology. He received his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Vermont and did his post-doctoral training at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a theoretical psychologist and has developed the “Unified Theory of Knowledge,” which is a consilient scientific humanistic worldview to unify psychology. He is the author of A New Unified Theory of Psychology (Springer, 2011), and A New Synthesis for Solving the Problem of Psychology: Addressing the Enlightenment Gap (Palgrave McMillian, November 2022). His scholarly work has been published in the field’s best journals, and he has developed a popular blog on Psychology Today, Theory of Knowledge, which has received over eight million views. He is a fellow of the American Psychological Association, the 2022 President of the Society for the Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration, and founded the Theory of Knowledge academic society.
Jim talks with Morten Christiansen and Nick Chater about their new book The Language Game: How Improvisation Created Language and Changed the World. They discuss the game of charades & its relevance to the evolution of language, the false myth of a pure language, language as self-organizing system, Captain Cook's encounter with indigenous South Americans, pidgins & creoles, gesture & vocalization, language & tool construction, the communication iceberg metaphor, misunderstandings in relationships, the now-or-never bottleneck, language understanding vs language production, genetic capacity for sequence-action-sequence tasks, chaotic improvisation as the core, the complaint that the young are ruining the language, the unbearable lightness of meaning, the miracle of sloppiness, order & disorder, word order & frozen accidents, language evolution without biological evolution, ChatGPT as a demonstration of how far learning from experience can get you, a poetry Turing test, and much more.The Language Game has been featured on Behavioral Scientist's Notable Books of 2022. Morten and Nick’s previous co-authored book Creating Language: Integrating Evolution, Acquisition, and Processing (MIT Press 2016) was named the Choice Outstanding Academic Title in 2017. Episode Transcript JRS EP75 - Nick Chater: “The Mind Is Flat” The Language Game: How Improvisation Created Language and Changed the World, by Morten Christiansen & Nick Chater Simpler Syntax, by Peter Culicover & Ray Jackendoff Syntactic Nuts: Hard Cases, Syntactic Theory, and Language Acquisition, by Peter W. CulicoverMorten H. Christiansen is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Psychology at Cornell University, Professor in Cognitive Science of Language at the School of Communication and Culture and the Interacting Minds Centre at Aarhus University, Denmark, as well as a Senior Scientist at the Haskins Labs. His research focuses on the interaction of biological and environmental constraints in the evolution, acquisition and processing of language. He was awarded the Cognitive Psychology Section Award from the British Psychological Society in 2013 and a Charles A. Ryskamp Research Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies in 2006. Christiansen was elected as a foreign member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters and of the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters, as well as elected Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and of the Cognitive Science Society. Christiansen is the author of over 250 scientific papers and has edited four books and authored two monographs.Nick Chater is a Professor of Behavioral Science at Warwick Business School. His research focuses on the cognitive and social foundations of rationality, with applications to business and public policy. He has (co-)written more than two hundred research papers and six books. His research has won awards including the British Psychological Society's Spearman Medal (1996); the Experimental Psychology Society Prize (1997); and the Cognitive Science Society's life-time achievement award, the David E Rumelhart Prize (to be awarded in 2023). His book, The Mind is Flat, won the American Association of Publishers PROSE Award in 2019, for Best book in Clinical Psychology. Nick is a fellow of the British Academy, the Cognitive Science Society and the Association for Psychological Science. He is a co-founder of the research consultancy Decision Technology; has served on the advisory board of the Behavioural Insight Team (popularly known as the 'Nudge Unit'); and been a member of the UK government's Climate Change Committee. He co-created, and was resident scientist on, eight series of the BBC Radio 4 show The Human Zoo.
Jim talks with Fred Beuttler and Mark Stahlman about their new online graduate program, Trivium University. They discuss the trivium & the quadrivium, instilling a better sense of grammar, the current digital paradigm, five paradigms in communication technology, the outsourcing of memory, retrieving scribal ways of thinking, why we need another university, re-centering professor-student interaction, cost disease in higher education, three spheres in geopolitics (East, West, and digital), the replacement of globalism, shaping a new generation of leaders, alphabetic vs logographic thinking, the Ukraine War as conflict between 3 spheres, what it means to be human, averting the geopolitical dangers of the Davos attitude, Net Assessment, setting Great Conversation over Great Books, averting World War III, and much more. Episode Transcript Trivium University Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, by Marshall McLuhan Plato Goes to China: The Greek Classics and Chinese Nationalism, by Shadi Bartsch The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics For an Age of Commerce, by Deirdre McCloskeyMark Stahlman is a biologist, computer architect and ex-Wall Street technology strategist. He is the President of the not-for-profit Center for the Study of Digital Life (CSDL, 501(c)3, digitallife.center) and its educational project Trivium University (Triv U, trivium.university). He is also CEO of Exogenous, Inc. (EXO, exogenousinc.com), a strategic risk analysis group and on the editorial staff of its publication, the Three Spheres Newsletter (TSN). He studied for but did not complete advanced degrees in Theology (UofChicago) and Molecular Biology (UW-Mad). He has been widely interviewed and published, including teaching online courses (available on YouTube via 52 Living Ideas).Fred W. Beuttler, Ph.D. is a fellow at the Center for the Study of Digital Life (CSDL), as well as one of the founding administrators of CSDL’s new Trivium University. He also teaches history at the University of Chicago’s Graham School for Continuing Liberal and Professional Studies. From 2015 to 2019 he was the Associate Dean of Liberal Arts Programs at the Graham School, overseeing a masters in liberal arts, the “great books” certificate program for adults, and the Fortnight in Oxford. From 2010 to 2015 he was Director of General Education at Carroll University, in Wisconsin. In 2012 and 2013 he was a Fulbright Senior Lecturer in Germany, where he taught American political history. Prior to his return to academia, he was Deputy Historian of the U.S. House of Representatives, in Washington, DC, from 2005 to 2010, where he coauthored and edited a number of histories of House committees. He received a BA at the University of Illinois, an MA from Trinity International University, and his Ph.D. in history from the University of Chicago, with a dissertation entitled, “Organizing an American Conscience: The Conference on Science, Philosophy, and Religion, in Their Relation to the Democratic Way of Life, 1940-1968.”
Layman Pascal interviews Jim about the principles and strategies that could transform Twitter into infrastructure for collective intelligence. They discuss Jim's motivation in engaging the topic, Musk's current lack of strategic intent, the least bad unfairness, avoiding point of view moderation, distinguishing between style and content, decorum, user-controlled filters, GameB's erroneous ban from Facebook, principles of fair enforcement, setting thresholds between private & public domains, whether Twitter is a public utility, advantages & risks of open-sourcing Twitter's code, two kinds of censorship, culpability around links, replacing the ad model with a subscription service, a connection with liquid democracy, issues with de-platforming, modulating viscosity, social media choices as socially consequential, adding groups, risks of the downvote, gradient rating systems, emergent engineering & why no one's using it, identity authentication, likely near-future problems, automating sophisticated moderation, experimenting with character limits, wild-card content, a community disinformation immune system, optimizing for time well spent, and much more. Episode Transcript "Musk and Moderation," by Jim Rutt (Quillette) "Saving Twitter—A Roundtable," featuring Jim Rutt (Quillette) JRS Currents 080: Joe Edelman and Hellie Hain on Rebuilding Meaning weco.io Hylo Coordinape MetaGameLayman Pascal is a public speaker, nondual theologian and yoga & meditation teacher based in Victoria, British Columbia. His family has lived in the coastal islands for five generations. He is a writer on themes of cultural philosophy, shamanism and organic spiritual development.
Jim talks with Joe Edelman and Ellie Hain about their new movement, Rebuilding Meaning, and two recent talks introducing ideas towards a better world. They discuss tools for building toward more meaningful lives, the meaning of meaning, looking behind the void, the litany of shit, exercises in eliciting meaning, coherent pluralism, containers vs meanings, how religions lost their grounding, values articulacy, the importance of aesthetics, using language learning models to extract meaning profiles, values vs virtues, sobering up from internet optimism, the decay of spaces, when focus shifts from meaning to incentives, funnels, tubes, & spaces, piling up strangers vs creating spaces, metrics of meaning, meaning cards, space trains, the example of science, Carl Rogers's concept of congruence, designing good ideal selves, spreading the message, and much more. Episode Transcript Rebuilding Meaning (website) JRS EP34 - Joe Edelman on the Power of Values "Exit the Void: A Movement for Meaning," by Ellie Hain "Rebuilding Society on Meaning," by Joe Edelman A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century: Evolution and the Challenges of Modern Life, by Heather E. Heying and Bret Weinstein JRS EP 173 - Hanzi Freinacht on Metamodern Self-HelpJoe Edelman developed the meaning-based organizational metrics at Couchsurfing.com, then co-founded the Center for Humane Technology with Tristan Harris, and coined the term “Time Well Spent” for a family of metrics adopted by teams at Facebook, Google, and Apple. Since then, he's worked on the philosophical underpinnings for new business metrics, design methods, and political movements. The central idea is to make people's sources of meaning explicit, so that how meaningful or meaningless things are can be rigorously accounted for. His previous career was in HCI and programming language design.Ellie Hain is an artist, researcher, and cultural strategist working on new imaginaries and ideologies for the post-industrial age.
Jim talks with Hanzi Freinacht about his book 12 Commandments: For Extraordinary People to Master Ordinary Life. They discuss the book as a response to Jordan Peterson & his "12 rules" books, metamodernism, fostering sober crazy people, magical thinking in highly developed personalities, integrations of science & spirituality, stabilizing higher phenomenological states, lower average states as a phenomenon of late-stage Game A, living in a mess moderately, fucking like a beast, sincere irony, quitting, doing the walk of shame, reverse death therapy, Carl Roger's idea of congruence, healing with justice, burning your maps, the pernicious belief that our maps are complete, killing your guru & finding the others, Jung's golden shadow, playing for forgiveness, and much more. Episode Transcript 12 Commandments: For Extraordinary People to Master Ordinary Life, by Hanzi Freinacht JRS EP36 - Hanzi Freinacht on Metamodernism JRS EP53 - Hanzi Freinacht on the Nordic Ideology JRS EP82 - Hanzi Freinacht on Building a Metamodern Future JRS EP 172 - Brendan Graham Dempsey on Emergentism JRS EP 170 - John Vervaeke and Jordan Hall on The Religion That Is Not a Religion JRS EP143 - John Vervaeke Part 1: Awakening from the Meaning CrisisHanzi Freinacht is a political philosopher, historian and sociologist, author of The Listening Society, Nordic Ideology, and the upcoming books The 6 Hidden Patterns of History and Outcompeting Capitalism. Much of his time is spent alone in the Swiss Alps.
Jim talks with Brendan Graham Dempsey about his book Emergentism: A Religion of Complexity for the Metamodern World. They discuss the meaning crisis & its symptoms, reciprocal narrowing, the pre-modern & the modern, the emergence of reductionism, the meaning of complexity & emergence, sacralizing the scientific creation narrative, Prigogine's theory of dissipative systems, the universe as a process of endless complexification, marrying Bobby Azarian's Unifying Theory of Reality & Gregg Henriques's Unified Theory of Knowledge, consciousness vs sentience, Integrated Information Theory vs John Searle's biological functionalism, the odds that intelligent life evolved only once in our galaxy, tying complexification to the God concept, making the "religion that is not a religion" accessible through mythopoeia & storytelling, the Omega Point, whether approaching the Omega Point implies pushing for a techno-Singularity, Emergentist ethics & practices, and much more. Episode Transcript Emergentism: A Religion of Complexity for the Modern World, by Brendan Graham Dempsey "Awakening from the Meaning Crisis," by John Vervaeke - YouTube series JRS EP143 - John Vervaeke Part 1: Awakening from the Meaning Crisis The Emergence of Everything: How the World Became Complex, by Harold Morowitz The Romance of Reality: How the Universe Organizes Itself to Create Life, Consciousness, and Cosmic Complexity, by Bobby Azarian JRS EP 159 - Bobby Azarian on the Romance of Reality JRS EP105 - Christof Koch on Consciousness JRS EP 167 - Bruce Damer on the Origins of Life JRS EP 171 - Bruce Damer Part 2: The Origins of Life – Implications JRS EP40 - Eric Smith on the Physics of Living SystemsBrendan Graham Dempsey is a writer whose work focuses on the meaning crisis and the nature of spirituality in metamodernity. He is the host of the Metamodern Spirituality podcast and the writer behind the six-volume (and counting) Metamodern Spirituality Series. He earned his BA in Religious Studies from the University of Vermont and his MA in Religion and the Arts from Yale University. He lives in Greensboro Bend, Vermont, where he runs the holistic retreat center Sky Meadow.
Jim talks with Douglas Rushkoff about the ideas in his essay series, "What's a Meta For?" They discuss Facebook's renaming to Meta, the semantic web, ChatGPT, a Turing test recalibration period, Rocco's Basilisk, the conversion of the real world into a meta-world, Elon Musk as techno-monarch, the limitations of his understanding of free speech, returning Twitter to the people who use it, Zuckerberg's Caesar obsession, Rushkoff's criticisms of GameB, the dangers of an abstracted "omega point," understanding the complex binding energies of GameA, dominant political isms as a result of industrialism, GameB's schism over personal vs institutional change, the need to actually deliver, coherent pluralism, what being a member of GameB will mean, dangers of a totalizing narrative, not knowing what GameB is, cultivated insecurity, rejecting the metaverse, GameB's resilient response to critiques, and much more. Episode Transcript Douglas Rushkoff (website) "What's a Meta For?" by Douglas Rushkoff (part 1 and 2) Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires, by Douglas Rushkoff Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity, by Douglas Rushkoff JRS Currents 051: Douglas Rushkoff on the Once and Future Internet Character.AI "If I Were CEO of Twitter," by Douglas Rushkoff "The Liminal Web: Mapping An Emergent Subculture Of Sensemakers, Meta-Theorists & Systems Poets," by Joe Lightfoot Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior, by Christopher Boehm The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, by David Graeber & David Wengrow Doomer Optimism JRS Currents 049: Ashley Colby & Jason Snyder on Doomer OptimismNamed one of the “world’s ten most influential intellectuals” by MIT, Douglas Rushkoff is an author and documentarian who studies human autonomy in a digital age. His twenty books include the just-published Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires, as well as the recent Team Human, based on his podcast, and the bestsellers Present Shock, Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus, Program or Be Programmed, Life Inc, and Media Virus. He also made the PBS Frontline documentaries Generation Like, The Persuaders, and Merchants of Cool. His book Coercion won the Marshall McLuhan Award, and the Media Ecology Association honored him with the first Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity.Rushkoff’s work explores how different technological environments change our relationship to narrative, money, power, and one another. He coined such concepts as “viral media,” “screenagers,” and “social currency,” and has been a leading voice for applying digital media toward social and economic justice. He is a research fellow of the Institute for the Future, and founder of the Laboratory for Digital Humanism at CUNY/Queens, where he is a Professor of Media Theory and Digital Economics. He is a columnist for Medium, and his novels and comics, Ecstasy Club, A.D.D, and Aleister & Adolf, are all being developed for the screen.
Jim talks with John Ash about his use of AI art tools and their implications for society. They discuss the basics of how the latest models work, using AI to communicate complexity, removing noise from noise, style transfer, pursuing knowledge for the sake of knowledge, expressing complex ideas through images, iterative de-noising in human conversation, stochastic gradient descent, receptivity to meaning, latent spaces, a high-order taxon of creative iteration, songwriting, finding the ideal number of iterations, stylistic interpolation, Cognicism, attribution & sourcing, citations in ChatGPT, the coming debates about ownership & permission, why the first court ruling will probably be about porn, the world as a giant interconnected neocortex, propaganda bots, owning our cognition, stochastic terrorism, future shock, solving internal alignment before we solve AI alignment, and much more. Episode Transcript Al Actress Performs a Mesmerizing Tale of Duality ("Atheus and the Golden Braid"), by Speaker John Ash - YouTube Play.ht The Congress (IMDb) Deep Reckonings, by Stephanie Lepp JRS EP129 - Stephanie Lepp on Deep ReckoningsJohn Ash is a thought leader in AI-assisted technologies, decentralized sensemaking, a writer, a visual and musical artist, and a steward for the ideas around Cognicism.
Jim continues his conversation with Serge Faguet, this time focusing on the nature of consciousness and its implications for the wise and ethical use of AI systems. They discuss a technological Singularity, the evolution & significance of consciousness, integrated information theory (IIT) vs. John Searle's arguments, whether current AIs exhibit consciousness, applying the golden rule to AIs, AI alignment, consciousness as solution to the combinatoric explosion of inference, the importance of systems thinking, an upcoming workshop on free will, virtue ethics without religion, building a decentralized nondogmatic religion, gender parity in GameB, Serge's move from entrepreneurship to full-time community-building, and much more.Serge looks forward to receiving any feedback or expressions of interest at first.last@gmail or (better) first_last on Telegram. Episode Transcript JRS Currents 074: Serge Faguet on Building Metacommunity "In Search of the 5th Attractor," by Jim Rutt (Medium) Integrated information theory (Wikipedia) Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality, by Max Tegmark JRS EP 157 - Terrence Deacon on Mind’s Emergence From Matter Wider Than the Sky: The Phenomenal Gift of Consciousness, by Gerald M. Edelman "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" by Thomas Nagel JRS EP 170 - John Vervaeke and Jordan Hall on The Religion That Is Not a Religion
Jim continues his discussion with Bruce Damer on the origins of life. They discuss Darwin's "warm little pond" hypothesis, hydrothermal fields as selection engines, wet-dry cycling, proto-cells, competing theories, implications of the hypothesis, niche construction theory, the origin of life as mostly collaborative, the Probability Interaction Memory (PIM) model, effects of crowding together, sharing results, the emergence of memory, PIM as a general principle of emergence, Covid-19 as an example of amplification, applying PIM to civilizational health, the loss of face-to-face community membranes in late-stage capitalism, "hearthology," applying PIM to the search for artificial general intelligence (AGI), collaborations with Ben Goertzel & Google's AI group, protocellular systems as general learning systems, creating a genesis engine, the Fermi paradox & the Drake equation, the new concept of urability, the low probability of sustaining life long enough to reach complexity, new data from Mars & exoplanet atmospheres, the possibility that Earth is extremely rare, bringing the galaxy to life, creating hundreds of thousands of warm little ponds using asteroids, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS EP 167 - Bruce Damer on the Origins of Life BIOTA Institute JRS EP140 - Robin Dunbar on Friendship JRS Currents 072: Ben Goertzel on Viable Paths to True AGI The Open Cognition Project (OpenCog) Tierra (Wikipedia) Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History, by Stephen Jay Gould SETI InstituteCanadian-born Dr. Bruce Damer has spent his life pursuing two questions: how did life on Earth begin? and how can we give that life (and ourselves) a sustainable pathway into the future and a presence beyond the Earth? A decade of laboratory and field research with his collaborator Prof. David Deamer at UCSC and teams around the world resulted in the Hot Spring Hypothesis for an Origin of Life, published in Scientific American in 2017 and the journal Astrobiology in 2020. The scenario has now passed its first key experimental tests in the laboratory and at volcanic hot springs around the world and has emerged as a leading contender for a general theory of abiogenesis. Implications of the work are now spreading through evolutionary biology, philosophy, AI and the search for life beyond Earth. New work with collaborators has proposed the urability framework, how life can start on many different worlds, and addresses some aspects of the Fermi Paradox.
Jim talks with Jamie Joyce about the organization she founded and directs, The Society Library. They discuss the Library's mission, its ontological structure, offering diverse interfaces, methods for overcoming limitations & biases, operating with integrity, contextualizing information deeply, intellectual honesty, intellectual independence, intellectual inclusion, the example of flat-Earth theory, earnest service, contrasting with Wikipedia, bias on Wikipedia, the work's positive effect on analysts, hiring librarians, the Pro-Truth Pledge, a collection on nuclear energy, working with is & ought, possibilities for automation, citations & UX design, and much more. Episode Transcript The Society Library JRS Currents 061: Nora Bateson on a Return to Earnestness Pro-Truth PledgeJamie Joyce is the Founder and Executive Director of The Society Library, a 501(c)3 collective intelligence organization which works on developing tools, resources, and methods to address epistemic issues in the United States. Her work includes modeling societal-scale deliberation, developing decision-making models, building libraries of knowledge, and offering educational curricula to fact-checks and university students. Jamie is also a 2022 Collective Intelligence Fellow at the Foresight Institute.
Jim talks with Michael Nielsen about the ideas in his and Kanjun Qiu's recent essay, "A Vision of Metascience: An Engine of Improvement for the Social Processes of Science." They discuss the meaning of metascience, a vivid example in Genovese maritime insurance, attracting intellectual dark matter, creation & limitations of the h-index, frozen accidents in our scientific operating system, what allowed the original DARPA to be so productive, funding-by-variance, failure audits, changing the unit of evaluation from papers to software, at-the-bench fellowships, science funders as detectors & predictors, endowed professorships by age 25, eliciting the secret thesis, metascience as an imaginative design practice, bottlenecks to decentralized improvement, the Open Science Collaboration, pre-registered study designs, metascience entrepreneurship, the arXiv preprint server, and much more. "A Vision of Metascience: An Engine of Improvement for the Social Processes of Science," by Michael Nielsen and Kanjun Qiu Michael Nielsen (website) JRS EP12 - Brian Nosek – Open Science and ReproducibilityMichael Nielsen is a scientist who helped pioneer quantum computing and the modern open science movement. His main current projects are in metascience, programmable matter, and tools for thought. He is the recent co-author of a book-long essay, "A Vision of Metascience", outlining the ways in which the institutions of science can become self-improving. All his work is united by a broader interest in tools that help people think and create, both individually and collectively. He is a research fellow at the Astera Institute in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Jim talks with John Vervaeke and Jordan Hall about Vervaeke's concept of "the religion that is not a religion." They discuss the need to create a home for ecologies of practices, Jordan and John's ongoing collaboration, the meaning crisis & our wisdom famine, meaning of life vs meaning in life, the category error of prioritizing propositions, limitations of the Axial Age religions, the two worlds mythology, a series of major conceptual involutions, the arising of social engineering, recursion & multi-part toolmaking, challenging the idea that the sacred is supernatural, the imaginal vs the imaginary, disambiguating notions of truth, defining sacred experience, the important & the dangerous, interpreting epiphanies, the ecological notion of rationality, living in the collapse of 19th-century epistemology, the Cartesian promise of certainty, defining religio & equivocation, relevance realization & fundamental connectedness, parallel interventions, the need for both meditative & contemplative practices, folk psychotechnologies, ecologies for communities, religion as the essence of culture, creating birth & death rituals, breastfeeding as religious practice, the question of scaling, creating developmental sequences & pedagogical continuity, embedding Metcalf's law, how practices that increase relationship propagate themselves, the combinatorial feedback loop afforded by shit being fucked, a final sales pitch for young men, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS EP143 - John Vervaeke Part 1 (of 5): Awakening from the Meaning Crisis Awakening from the Meaning Crisis - John Vervaeke (YouTube series) JRS EP26 - Jordan Hall on the Game B Emergence Return to the Source Retreats
Jim talks with Serge Faguet about emerging transnational networks of cooperation. They discuss the mismatch between rates of technological development & cooperation abilities, building a good Singularity, uniting an already-existing movement, "the right way to live" as a root of evil, coherent pluralism as a basis for metacommunity, taking responsibility for the world, a coming fork in humanity's future, bringing the universe to life, examples of decentralized community-building, opportunities for applying large language models, technological tools for communities, psychological issues & the insanity of society, TikTok as pure monetization without virtue, the possibility of unlimited energy, omni-consideration, a coming point where money is irrelevant, radical abundance, why we'll have to think about AI as sentient, disappointing dynamics in drug approval, reforming by playing a different game, charter cities, a call to action, and much more.
Episode Transcript Serge Faguet on Medium The Ministry for the Future, by Kim Stanley Robinson Radical Abundance: How a Revolution in Nanotechnology Will Change Civilization, by K. Eric Drexler
Serge Faguet is a Russian-Ukrainian entrepreneur and prolific thinker. He has founded multiple tech companies including multi-billion-dollar B2B online travel company Emerging Travel Group, concierge medicine care delivery company Novami, AI drug discovery company Multiomic Health, automated clinical trial recruitment company Nexus and Web2 ⇒ Web3 onboarding product Identix. A proponent of biohacking, his vision is to build a large-scale commercial data/biobank that gathers healthcare data to make major progress for increasing productivity, longevity, and quality of life. As a philosopher-entrepreneur, Serge believes that we need to adopt a syncretic approach to innovation and use entrepreneurial ideation to enact enduring material change and eventually construct a more hospitable future for all of humanity. Serge is interested in implementing the principles of Web3 and crypto to build decentralized institutions, govern ourselves, and control our own data. His greatest passions lie in inspiring others to discover their authentic selves through communal collaboration and encouraging political action by creating a healthier, more self-aware society.
Jim talks with Owen Cox and Daniel Fraga of the Technosocial podcast about their critique that the GameB movement has underestimated the importance of sex and violence. They discuss the attempt to deal logically with illogical forces, the origins of the Game C joke, the limits of analytical systematization, coherent pluralism, whether GameB is a neo-Benthamism, sex & conflict as spiritual practice, how limits create pleasure clusters, Twitter wars as unacknowledged kink, the social operating systems of Kibbutzes, a norm against pornography, being sophisticated about sexual norms & whether it's possible in a movement designed for everyone, building night-club-style dynamics in GameB, social conviviality, the sublimation of war & violence, allowing ritualized violence, designing social containers that take hidden motivations into account, the end of American hegemony, investigating the moral question of energy usage, Game B's need for more artists & social designers, building more institutions for weirdos, and much more.
Episode Transcript Technosocial Podcast (YouTube) Ontological Design: Subject is Project, by Daniel Fraga Game~B Film Game-B.org Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, by René Girard Parallax Sangha - Sweeny vs Bard Ep. 1: Shamanism in the digital age
There is an occult axis connecting technology and our darkest desires. Creativity cannot be thought through without including psychoanalysis. Philosophy must not escape from pain, violence and sexuality: it must include them. These are the backdoors to the future. That's what interests Owen Cox and Daniel Fraga, hosts of the Technosocial podcast. Technosocial is a space for thinking about the fringes of the internet and exploring how technology is reshaping society. Only from this excess does "Project" become possible.
Jim talks with Roar Bjonnes about the ideas in his new book co-authored with Caroline Hargreaves, Growing a New Economy: Beyond Crisis Capitalism and Environmental Destruction. They talk about a quote from Naomi Klein, interlocking crises, COP27, the collective cognition problem, replacing the real economy with a financial economy, the idea of inherent selfishness, 4 integrated circles, the carbon pulse, nature as a machine, the misnomer of de-growth, why the U.S. is a debtor economy, dividend money, how the Eurozone made the rich richer, Greece's high military spending, private corporate ownership as a driver of inequality, Doughnut economics, reforming co-op laws, where government ownership comes in, what would happen if finance collapsed, a global jubilee, an approach to eliminating public debt, increasing alternative energy responsibly, resacrilizing economics, rehypothecating collateral, how nation-states should manage their economies, a refutation of comparative advantage, caps on wealth & income, the coming storm, and much more.
Episode Transcript Growing a New Economy: Beyond Crisis Capitalism and Environmental Destruction, by Roar Bjonnes & Caroline Hargreaves Systems Change Alliance JRS EP150 - Jeremy Lent on the Web of Meaning The Web of Meaning: Integrating Science and Traditional Wisdom to Find Our Place in the Universe, by Jeremy Lent JRS EP100 - Sam Bowles on Our Cooperative Nature JRS EP168 - Nate Hagens on Collective Futures "Dividend Money: An Alternative to Central Banker Managed Fractional Reserve Banking Money" - Jim Rutt @ Santa Fe Institute (YouTube) The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time, by Karl Polanyi
Roar Bjonnes is the co-founder of Systems Change Alliance, a long-time environmental activist, and a writer on ecology and alternative economics, which he terms eco-economics. He was the editor of the American Common Future magazine in the mid-90s, a magazine that featured some of the first articles taking a critical look at green capitalism and the sustainable development model. He is the co-author of the book Growing a New Economy, which critiques the multiple crises caused by growth-capitalism and outlines the macro-economic framework for a new eco-economy. World-renowned environmentalist Bill McKibben called the book “a hopeful account of the possibilities contained in our current crisis.”
Jim talks with Nate Hagens about his new book co-authored with DJ White, Reality Blind: Integrating the Systems Science Underpinning Our Collective Futures, volume 1. They discuss Nate's Reality 101 course, the core fundamental drivers of our current situation, writing "through an alien lens," steering away from optimism and pessimism, the tradeoff between accuracy and helpfulness, telling the truth & letting the chips fall, the buildup of underground carbon, the carbon pulse, a bank account of ancient sunlight, invention of the Newcomen atmospheric engine, the Jevons paradox, exponential growth in a finite world, disliking the word "degrowth," how humanity became a heat engine, gene agendas, advertising as the most deleterious invention, fast fashion, hypernovelty, trophic pyramids, the sixth great extinction, building a post-carbon life, energy as the currency of life, energy return on investment, why we don't want free energy, thinking about the future probabilistically, predicting a drop in the resource economy, hitting the reset button on finance, consumer abundance as a peacock's tail, and much more.
Episode Transcript Propaganda, by Edward L. Bernays The Century of the Self (documentary by Adam Curtis)
Dr. Nate Hagens is the Executive Director of The Institute for the Study of Energy & Our Future (ISEOF) an organization focused on educating and preparing society for the coming cultural transition. Formerly in the finance industry at Lehman Brothers and Salomon Brothers, since 2003 Nate has shifted his focus to understanding the interrelationships between energy, environment, and finance and the implication this synthesis has for human futures. Nate hosts the podcast The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens, in which he has conversations with experts in energy, ecology, government, technology, and the economy to provide a systemic view of the world around us.
Jim talks with Ben Goertzel about the ideas in his recent essay "Three Viable Paths to True AGI." They discuss the meaning of artificial general intelligence, Steve Wozniak's basic AGI test, whether common tasks actually require AGI, a conversation with Joscha Bach, why deep neural nets are unsuited for human-level AGI, the challenge of extrapolating world-models, why imaginative improvisation might not be interesting to corporations, the 3 approaches that might have merit (cognition-level, brain-level, and chemistry-level), the OpenCog system Ben is working on, whether it's a case of "good old-fashioned AI," where evolution fits into the approach, why deep neural nets aren't brain simulations & attempts to make them more realistic, a hypothesis about how to improve generalization, neural nets for music & the psychological landscape of AGI research, algorithmic chemistry & the origins of life problem, why AGI deserves more resources than it's getting, why we may need better parallel architectures, how & how much society should invest in new approaches, the possibility of a cultural shift toward AGI viability, and much more.
Episode Transcript "Three Viable Paths to True AGI," by Ben Goertzel (Substack) JRS Currents 025: Ben Goertzel on Decentralizing Social Media JRS EP3 - Dr. Ben Goertzel – OpenCog, AGI and SingularityNET JRS EP87 - Joscha Bach on Theories of Consciousness JRS EP25 - Gary Marcus on Rebooting AI OpenCog Hyperon "Algorithmic Chemistry," by Walter Fontana JRS EP 167 - Bruce Damer on the Origins of Life
Dr. Ben Goertzel is a cross-disciplinary scientist, entrepreneur and author. Born in Brazil to American parents, in 2020 after a long stretch living in Hong Kong he relocated his primary base of operations to a rural island near Seattle. He leads the SingularityNET Foundation, the OpenCog Foundation, and the AGI Society which runs the annual Artificial General Intelligence conference. Dr. Goertzel’s research work encompasses multiple areas including artificial general intelligence, natural language processing, cognitive science, machine learning, computational finance, bioinformatics, virtual worlds, gaming, parapsychology, theoretical physics and more. He also chairs the futurist nonprofit Humanity+, serves as Chief Scientist of AI firms Rejuve, Mindplex, Cogito and Jam Galaxy, all parts of the SingularityNET ecosystem, and serves as keyboardist and vocalist in the Jam Galaxy Band, the first-ever band led by a humanoid robot.
Jim talks with Bruce Damer about the origins of life. They discuss what Earth was like 4 billion years ago, how the oceans formed, the new concept of urability, the distinction between supporting life & bringing it into being, the source of organic building blocks, combinatorial selection, the ocean vents theory vs the warm little pond hypothesis, the Murchison meteorite, wet-dry cycling, the water problem, using stromatolites & other natural analogs to test conjectures, finding the oldest evidence of life in a hot spring setting, shouting matches as evidence of paradigm shifts, what warm pools were made of, a one-pot solution that's testable at every stage, the source of vesicles, why the ocean is implausible as a starting point, chemical gardens, the great search for the origins of emergence, semipermeable membranes, "sludge of progenitor," the jacuzzi origin of life, the origin of life as a communal unit, the ratchet to greater complexity, thermal change in near-real time, the error catastrophe in evolutionary computing, actual experiments being performed, the Fermi paradox & astrobiological implications, a hot spring on Mars, urability scores, the Drake equation, where complexity theory meets biology, the rarity of complex life & the responsibility that comes with it, bringing the universe to life, and much more.
Episode Transcript JRS EP40 - Eric Smith on the Physics of Living Systems Biota.org "The Hot Spring Hypothesis for an Origin of Life," by Bruce Damer & David Deamer JRS EP18 - Stuart Kauffman on Complexity, Biology & T.A.P. "The Water Paradox and the Origins of Life" (Nature), by Michael Marshall "Urability: A Property of Planetary Bodies That Can Support an Origin of Life," by David Deamer and Bruce Damer
Canadian-born Dr. Bruce Damer has spent his life pursuing two questions: how did life on Earth begin? and how can we give that life (and ourselves) a sustainable pathway into the future and a presence beyond the Earth? A decade of laboratory and field research with his collaborator Prof. David Deamer at UCSC and teams around the world resulted in the Hot Spring Hypothesis for an Origin of Life, published in Scientific American in 2017 and the journal Astrobiology in 2020. The scenario has now passed its first key experimental tests in the laboratory and at volcanic hot springs around the world and has emerged as a leading contender for a general theory of abiogenesis. Implications of the work are now spreading through evolutionary biology, philosophy, AI and the search for life beyond Earth. New work with collaborators has proposed the urability framework, how life can start on many different worlds, and addresses some aspects of the Fermi Paradox.
Jim talks with Liam Madden, a congressional candidate in Vermont who strongly resonates with the GameB ethos. They discuss Liam's decision to run as a Republican, Vermont's primary laws, personal responsibility & community as reciprocal values, stewarding complex & godlike technologies, the Consilience Project, the sacredness of life, the meaning crisis, Ted Kaczynski's critiques, ending war mentality, multipolar traps, fixing the machinery of democracy, liquid democracy, ranked-choice voting, proportional representation, election finance reform, qualified democracy, the possibility of a constitutional convention, an alternative to universal basic income, monetary reform, ending the growth imperative, creating a Public Service Corps, risks of exponential technology, how the campaign is going so far, what Liam would need to win, Jim's endorsement, and much more.
Episode Transcript Rebirth Democracy (Liam's website) @LiamAwakening on Twitter Game-B.org The Consilience Project Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition, by Charles Eisenstein Nate Hagens (website) Daniel Schmachtenberger (website) JRS EP32 - Jason Brennan on Irrational Democracy & Academia
Liam Madden is a Marine Corps veteran who became the leader of America's largest antiwar organization of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, and winner of the Institute for Policy Studies Human Rights Award. As an entrepreneur Liam won M.I.T.'s Solve award for organizations innovating solutions to climate change. His work has been covered by 60 Minutes, the NY Times, & most other major media. Liam is an independent who won a Congressional primary election on a platform centered around reforms to the two-party system.
Jim talks with Brian Chau about seeing the world as it is, not as we wish it to be. They discuss the firehose of bullshit, how modern-day propaganda works, QAnon & Pizzagate, the idea of egregores, adapting our biases against a drastically increased sample size, paranoia about child safety & kidnapping, why the vast majority … Continue reading Currents 070: Brian Chau on Propaganda & Populism →
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Jim talks with Euvie Ivanova and Bonnitta Roy about a recent Twitter exchange exploring intimacy as “both the problem and the solution.” They discuss the context of the exchange, today’s shallowness & loneliness epidemics, Bonnitta’s recent retreat at the Monastic Academy, intimacy as the breakdown of self-other boundaries, somatic markers of the truth-sense, porous membranes, “actual … Continue reading Currents 069: Bonnitta Roy and Euvie Ivanova on Collective Intimacy →
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Jim talks with Lene Rachel Andersen in the second of a two-part series about her new book Libertism: Grasping the 21st Century, picking up where they left off in the book’s 18 sub-patterns of being. They discuss selfish genes & memes, Rene Girard’s mimetics, the responsibility of replication in the era of electronic media, TikTok’s threat … Continue reading EP 166 Lene Rachel Andersen Part 2: Libertism →
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Jim talks with Grandmaster chess player and philosopher Jonathan Rowson about the recent drama between Magnus Carlsen and Hans Niemann in the Champions Chess Tour. They discuss Rowson’s chess background, the bare facts of the kerfuffle, Niemann’s persona & career trajectory, present evidence for whether Niemann cheated & the reasonable odds that he won fairly, … Continue reading Currents 068: Jonathan Rowson on the Chess Drama →
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Jim talks with John Markoff about his new biography, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand. They discuss the meme of Brand as a Zelig, his role as a catalyst, the Pace Layers model, why Brand wasn’t a pure libertarian, a Hemingwayesque boyhood, a commitment to conservation, relentless networking, the influence of Frederic Spiegelberg, … Continue reading EP 164 John Markoff on the Many Lives of Stewart Brand →
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Jim talks with Benedict Beckeld about his new book Western Self-Contempt: Oikophobia in the Decline of Civilizations. They discuss the meaning of oikophobia—hatred of one’s homeland—its recurrence throughout history, the prevalence of oikophobia in the U.S., a continuum from xenophobia to oikophobia, finding the Aristotelian golden mean, oikophobia in academia, the development of self-critcism in … Continue reading EP 163 Benedict Beckeld on Western Self-Contempt →
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Jim talks with recurring guest Max Borders about the ideas in his new book The Decentralist: Mission, Morality, and Meaning in the Age of Crypto. They discuss happiness as a common ground, a eudaimonistic sensibility, the marshmallow experiment & deferred gratification, how inflation affects behavioral discount rates, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, von Mises’s praxeology, reconciling individual … Continue reading EP 162 Max Borders on Decentralism →
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Jim talks with recurring guest Zak Stein about the Consilience Project’s article “Technology is Not Values Neutral: Ending the Reign of Nihilistic Design.” They discuss how technologies actualize & encode values, 2nd- & 3rd-order effects of technologies, the “invisible hand” approach to design, effects of cars on culture, landscapes, & sexuality, the work of historian … Continue reading Currents 067: Zak Stein on Ending Nihilistic Design →
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Jim continues his discussion with Matthew Pirkowski on ideas of emergence and how they can be applied to today’s meta-crisis. They discuss the meaning of emergence, treating potential as ontologically real, exaptation & meta-adaptation, path dependency in the history of science, the naivety of closed systems, the apparent tension between energy efficiency & energy production, … Continue reading Currents 066: Matthew Pirkowski on Emergence in Possibility Space →
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Jim talks with Greg Thomas about American democracy & the problems created by racial essentialism & racialization. They discuss the Jazz Leadership Project, jazz as metaphor, the connection between racism & the concept of race, the slave trade’s role in producing racial essentialism, Bacon’s Rebellion & subsequent divide-and-conquer legislation, justifications for exploitation, the horrors of … Continue reading EP 161 Greg Thomas on Untangling the Gordian Knot of Race →
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Jim talks with Curtis Yarvin about his proposal to replace our current government with a monarchy, part of an ongoing exploration of problems with and alternatives to democracy. They discuss a regime-change thought experiment beginning with liquid democracy, the goals of democracy & the feeling of being in charge, why our government doesn’t actually have … Continue reading EP 160 Curtis Yarvin on Monarchy in the U.S.A. →
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Jim talks with Bobby Azarian about the ideas in his new book The Romance of Reality: How the Universe Organizes Itself to Create Life, Consciousness, and Cosmic Complexity, which Jim calls “the most Jim Rutt Show-ish book ever.” They discuss the meaning & limits of reductionism, why the universe may not be moving toward an increasingly … Continue reading EP 159 Bobby Azarian on the Romance of Reality →
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Jim talks with Alexander Bard, continuing a series of encounters between GameB and the Dark Renaissance movement. They discuss the Grand Narrative Trilogy Bard has been writing with Jan Söderqvist, the kinds of stories we tell about ourselves, why Hiroshima remains the signal event of modern history, fostering symbiotic intelligence, the difference between the GameA … Continue reading Currents 065: Alexander Bard on Protopian Narratology →
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This is the first, experimental episode of Who Are You, a subseries of the Jim Rutt Show in which Jim has an unplanned conversation with a mystery guest nominated and elected by listeners. In this episode he meets Seth Jordan, a writer focusing on the social ideas of Rudolf Steiner. They discuss Steiner’s view of … Continue reading Who Are You EP 01: Seth Jordan on Social Threefolding →
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Jim talks with Michael Garfield and J.F. Martel about the intersection of AI and art. They discuss DALL-E & Midjourney, whether conscious agency is necessary for art, artifice vs discernment, Jung’s synchronicity, AI art as dreaming, discernment & consecration, the modern vs the algorithmic self, the CIA’s role in funding abstract expressionism, the imaginal aspect … Continue reading Currents 064: Michael Garfield and J.F. Martel on Art x AI →
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Jim talks to Remzi Bajrami about the ideas in his book Common Planet: A New Game of Life. They discuss what GameB means to him, three classes of players, whether property or profit is the engine of GameA, the source of value, the value of careful labor, the generator function of money-on-money return, historical origins … Continue reading EP 158 Remzi Bajrami on Flow Currency →
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Jim talks with Jessica Flack about nth-order effects of the war in Ukraine. They discuss the meaning of second- and nth-order effects, black swans, Gaussian vs fat-tailed distribution models of extreme social events, factoring in Ukraine’s wheat & Russia’s fertilizer production, agency & reflexivity, how perceptions of events as extreme can amplify second-order effects, the … Continue reading Currents 063: Jessica Flack on nth-Order Effects of the Russia-Ukraine War →
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Jim talks to Terrence Deacon about the ideas in his book Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged From Matter. They discuss the story of zero, integrating absence into physical theories, systems that generate entropy to stave off entropy, the history of emergence & the risk of mysterianism, reframing emergence as removal & constraint, orthograde vs contragrade processes, … Continue reading EP 157 Terrence Deacon on Mind’s Emergence From Matter →
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Jim talks with James Poulos about the ideas in his new book Human Forever: The Spiritual Politics of Digital War. They discuss his decision to publish the book on the blockchain, going beginner’s-mind on media & communications theory, the meaning of Gnosticism, responsibility as worship & its transfer to machines, returning worth to the human, a … Continue reading EP 156 James Poulos on Remaining Human →
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In this episode, Jim Rutt is a guest on his own show! He’s interviewed by Stephanie Lepp about the ideas in his Quillette essay “Musk and Moderation.” They discuss where things stand with Musk’s recent purchase of Twitter, Jim’s 41-year background in online community moderation, strengthening & clarifying Twitter’s decorum moderation, loosening point-of-view moderation, the “green sprouts” issue … Continue reading Currents 062: Stephanie Lepp Interviews Jim Rutt on Musk and Moderation →
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Jim has a second talk with Iain McGilchrist about the ideas in his book The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World. They discuss whether the continuity of time matters on the human scale, randomness as a real attribute of the universe, differentiating between unpredictability & randomness, deterministic chaos, the … Continue reading EP 155 Iain McGilchrist Part 2: The Matter With Things →
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Jim talks with Nora Bateson about ecologies of communication and the value of earnestness… Jim talks with Nora Bateson about ecologies of communication and the value of earnestness. They discuss simple irony, dramatic irony, post-irony, & meta-irony; irony & the ecology of communication, the mistake of pitting earnestness directly against irony, questioning forms of cynicism … Continue reading Currents 061: Nora Bateson on a Return to Earnestness →
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Jim talks with Iain McGilchrist about his new book, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World… Jim talks with Iain McGilchrist about his new book, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World. They discuss issues created by having one word for “know,” the … Continue reading EP 154 Iain McGilchrist on The Matter With Things →
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Jim talks with Panos Siozos, CEO and co-founder of LearnWorlds, a platform for online education, about alternative routes in education delivery… Jim talks with Panos Siozos, CEO and co-founder of LearnWorlds, a platform for online education, about alternative routes in education delivery. They discuss how Panos transitioned from science to entrepreneurship, why adult lifetime learning … Continue reading Currents 060: Panos Siozos on Online Education →
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Continuing his series of expert interviews on the Russia-Ukraine War, Jim talks again with Samo Burja about the state of the Russian advance one month in… Continuing his series of expert interviews on the Russia-Ukraine War, Jim talks again with Samo Burja about the state of the Russian advance one month in. They discuss Putin’s … Continue reading Currents 059: Samo Burja on RU->UKR 23-MAR-2022 →
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Jim talks with Forrest Landry about his Small Group Method and the obstacles to scaling it up. They discuss why studying group processes is important, the difficulty of doing new things with old structures, 3 classes of decision-making structures (consensus, meritocracy, & democracy), advantages & disadvantages of each, how to use each model as a … Continue reading EP 153 Forrest Landry on Small Group Method →
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Continuing his series of expert interviews on the Russia-Ukraine War, Jim talks again with John Robb, this time about the likelihood of a settlement… Continuing his series of expert interviews on the Russia-Ukraine War, Jim talks again with John Robb, this time about the likelihood of a settlement. They discuss the pressures currently pushing both … Continue reading Currents 058: John Robb on Russia-Ukraine Outcomes →
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Continuing his series of expert interviews on the Russia-Ukraine War, Jim talks with Timothy Clancy about forecasting the conflict through mid-May… Continuing his series of expert interviews on the Russia-Ukraine War, Jim talks with Timothy Clancy about forecasting the conflict through mid-May. They discuss five likely mid-game scenarios, Ukraine as a Go board, how urban … Continue reading Currents 057: Timothy Clancy on Russia’s Mid-Game →
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Jim has a talk with Julyan Davey inspired by Julyan’s essay series “Weaving a Non-Dual Civilisation“… Jim has a talk with Julyan Davey inspired by Julyan’s essay series “Weaving a Non-Dual Civilisation.” They discuss the “sublimewe” modality as a means of shifting into a GameB mindset, incorporating the intersubjective world into our models, interweaving inner … Continue reading Currents 056: Julyan Davey on Weaving a Non-Dual Civilization →
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Continuing his series of expert interviews on the unfolding situation in Ukraine, Jim talks with Paul Goble, a longtime specialist on ethnic and religious issues in Eurasia… Continuing his series of expert interviews on the unfolding situation in Ukraine, Jim talks with Paul Goble, a longtime specialist on ethnic and religious issues in Eurasia. They … Continue reading Currents 055: Paul Goble on Putin’s Strategic Mistakes →
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Jim has a timely talk with Samo Burja about the Russian invasion of Ukraine and what it might mean moving forward… Jim has a timely talk with Samo Burja about the Russian invasion of Ukraine and what it might mean moving forward. They discuss the consequences of a (likely) Russian victory, Russia’s bet on new … Continue reading Currents 054: Samo Burja on the Russia-Ukraine War →
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Jim talks with Matthew Pirkowski about new frameworks in the study of emergence… Jim talks with Matthew Pirkowski about new frameworks in the study of emergence. They discuss the concept’s roots in the work of J.S. Mill, 19th-century tensions between reductionism & vitalism, Terrence Deacon’s ententional properties, ententionality as a result of constraints, giving reality … Continue reading Currents 053: Matthew Pirkowski on Grammars of Emergence →
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Jim has a forward-looking talk with recurring guest John Robb about the meaning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine… Jim has a forward-looking talk with recurring guest John Robb about the meaning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. They discuss the likelihood that the event is a major historical hinge, Russia & China’s different rule set, costs … Continue reading Currents 052: John Robb on War in Ukraine →
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Jim talks with Douglas Rushkoff about where the internet came from, where it might go, & how to move from dystopian despair to productive engagement… Jim talks with Douglas Rushkoff about where the internet came from, where it might go, & how to move from dystopian despair to productive engagement. Loosely following the syllabus for (Re-)Designing … Continue reading Currents 051: Douglas Rushkoff on the Once and Future Internet →
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Jim talks with Greg Lukianoff, president & CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) and co-author, with Jonathan Haidt, of The Coddling of the American Mind… Jim talks with Greg Lukianoff, president & CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) and co-author, with Jonathan Haidt, of The Coddling of the American … Continue reading Currents 050: Greg Lukianoff on Free Speech →
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Jim talks with Gary Bengier about his science fiction novel Unfettered Journey, depicting a hard-science view of a possible world 140 or so years in the future… Jim talks with Gary Bengier about his science fiction novel Unfettered Journey, depicting a hard-science view of a possible world 140 or so years in the future. They … Continue reading EP 152 Gary Bengier on Hard-Science Futures →
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Jim talks with Ashley Colby & Jason Snyder about the growing movement of Doomer Optimism… Jim talks with Ashley Colby & Jason Snyder about the growing movement of Doomer Optimism. They discuss Ashley’s coinage of the term, doomer optimism as an open-source structure of feeling, avoiding pathologies of despair & naive optimism, balancing philosophy with … Continue reading Currents 049: Ashley Colby & Jason Snyder on Doomer Optimism →
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Jim talks with Daniel Mezick about two books on leadership & social coherence, Michael Suk-Young Chwe’s Rational Ritual & Christopher Boehm’s Hierarchy in the Forest… Jim talks with Daniel Mezick about two books on leadership & social coherence, Michael Suk-Young Chwe’s Rational Ritual & Christopher Boehm’s Hierarchy in the Forest. They discuss ritual as a … Continue reading EP 151 Daniel Mezick on Ritual and Hierarchy →
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Jim has a wide-ranging talk with Welf von Hören, co-founder of the recently beta-launched Potential app… Jim has a wide-ranging talk with Welf von Hören, co-founder of the recently beta-launched Potential app. (Listeners who download the app can use the invitation code “jimruttshow”.) They discuss Potential’s goal of upgrading the human capacity for omni-considerate choices, … Continue reading Currents 048: Welf von Hören on Potential →
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Jim has a wide-ranging talk with Jeremy Lent about his latest book, The Web of Meaning: Integrating Science and Traditional Wisdom to Find Our Place in the Universe… Jim has a wide-ranging talk with Jeremy Lent about his latest book, The Web of Meaning: Integrating Science and Traditional Wisdom to Find Our Place in the Universe. They discuss the dominant worldview … Continue reading EP 150 Jeremy Lent on the Web of Meaning →
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Jim has a wide-ranging talk with Samuel Scarpino on Covid-19 epidemiology and disease surveillance… Jim has a wide-ranging talk with Samuel Scarpino on Covid-19 epidemiology and disease surveillance. They discuss some of the biggest surprises in Covid research since its beginning, the importance of understanding the evolutionary trajectory of the virus, the oscillation pattern of … Continue reading Currents 047: Samuel Scarpino on the Epidemiology of Covid-19 →
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Jim has a wide-ranging talk with Joshua Vial, co-founder of the multifaceted social-impact support network Enspiral… Jim has a wide-ranging talk with Joshua Vial, co-founder of the multifaceted social-impact support network Enspiral. They discuss Enspiral’s origin story, its organizational structure, tradeoffs between exploration & exploitation, coherent pluralism, how to do a company without bosses, keeping … Continue reading EP 149 Joshua Vial on Enspiral →
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Jim talks with Henry Elkus and Sam Feinburg, founders of the global problem solving organization Helena…Jim talks with Henry Elkus and Sam Feinburg, founders of the global problem solving organization Helena. They discuss how Helena identifies society’s big problems, the group’s origin story, how they attracted a large membership of people who are first-class in their domains, … Continue reading Currents 046: Henry Elkus & Sam Feinburg on Solving Societal Problems →
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Jim has a wide-ranging talk with neuroscientist Antonio Damasio about his latest book, Feeling & Knowing: Making Minds Conscious… Jim has a wide-ranging talk with neuroscientist Antonio Damasio about his latest book, Feeling & Knowing: Making Minds Conscious. They discuss the importance of separating intelligence from the nervous system, feeling as the inaugural event of consciousness, distinguishing … Continue reading EP148 Antonio Damasio on Feeling and Knowing →
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John Vervaeke joins Jim for the final episode of a five-part series examining the ideas put forward in Vervaeke’s popular YouTube series, Awakening from the Meaning Crisis… John Vervaeke joins Jim for the final episode of a five-part series examining the ideas put forward in Vervaeke’s popular YouTube series, Awakening from the Meaning Crisis. They discuss relevance’s lack of essence, … Continue reading EP147 John Vervaeke Part 5: Awakening from the Meaning Crisis →
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Jim has a timely discussion with geophysicist Dorian Abbot, whose public lecture was recently canceled by MIT—Jim’s alma mater—due to Dorian’s views on affirmative action… Jim has a timely discussion with geophysicist Dorian Abbot, whose public lecture was recently canceled by MIT—Jim’s alma mater—due to Dorian’s views on affirmative action. They discuss the (unrelated) scientific … Continue reading Currents 045: Dorian Abbot on Protecting Academic Freedom →
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John Vervaeke joins Jim for the fourth of a five-part series examining the ideas put forward in Vervaeke’s popular YouTube series, Awakening from the Meaning Crisis… John Vervaeke joins Jim for the fourth of a five-part series examining the ideas put forward in Vervaeke’s popular YouTube series, Awakening from the Meaning Crisis. They discuss Nietzsche as a prophet of the meaning crisis, the … Continue reading EP146 John Vervaeke Part 4: Awakening from the Meaning Crisis →
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John Vervaeke joins Jim for the third of a five-part series examining the ideas put forward in Vervaeke’s popular YouTube series, Awakening from the Meaning Crisis… John Vervaeke joins Jim for the third of a five-part series examining the ideas put forward in Vervaeke’s popular YouTube series, Awakening from the Meaning Crisis. They discuss altered … Continue reading EP145 John Vervaeke Part 3: Awakening from the Meaning Crisis →
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John Vervaeke joins Jim for the second of a five-part series examining the ideas put forward in Vervaeke’s popular YouTube series, Awakening from the Meaning Crisis… John Vervaeke joins Jim for the second of a five-part series examining the ideas put forward in Vervaeke’s popular YouTube series, Awakening from the Meaning Crisis. They discuss virtue & virtuosity, Plato’s man-monster-lion … Continue reading EP144 John Vervaeke Part 2: Awakening from the Meaning Crisis →
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John Vervaeke joins Jim for the first of a five-part series examining the ideas put forward in Vervaeke’s popular YouTube series, Awakening from the Meaning Crisis… John Vervaeke joins Jim for the first of a five-part series examining the ideas put forward in Vervaeke’s popular YouTube series, Awakening from the Meaning Crisis. In this episode they focus on defining core concepts, including meaning, non-reductive … Continue reading EP143 John Vervaeke Part 1: Awakening from the Meaning Crisis →
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Zak Stein & Jim have a wide-ranging talk inspired by two recent Consilience Project essays on the information war & propaganda… Zak Stein & Jim have a wide-ranging talk inspired by two recent Consilience Project essays on the information war & propaganda. They discuss the culture wars as a case of mutually assured destruction, distinguishing education from propaganda, developing widespread resistance … Continue reading Currents 044: Zak Stein on Propaganda and the Information War →
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Lene Rachel Andersen & Jim have a wide-ranging talk about the meaning of Bildung & the growing Bildung movement, inspired by last week’s Global Bildung Festival… Lene Rachel Andersen & Jim have a wide-ranging talk about the meaning of Bildung & the growing Bildung movement, inspired by last week’s Global Bildung Festival. They discuss easily … Continue reading Currents 043: Lene Rachel Andersen on Bildung →
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Jim has a wide-ranging talk with returning guest Robert Tercek about competing visions of the metaverse… Jim has a wide-ranging talk with returning guest Robert Tercek about competing visions of the metaverse, centralized vs. decentralized models, the importance of interoperability standards, differences between VR & AR, digital twins, digitization of the supply chain, AI-enabled creation … Continue reading EP142 Robert Tercek on the Metaverse →
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Jim has a wide-ranging talk with evolutionary biologist Heather Heying about her & Bret Weinstein’s new book, A Hunter-Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century: Evolution and the Challenges of Modern Life… Jim has a wide-ranging talk with evolutionary biologist Heather Heying about her & Bret Weinstein’s new book, A Hunter-Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century: Evolution and the Challenges of Modern Life. They discuss hyper-novelty & … Continue reading EP141 Heather Heying on Confronting Hyper-Novelty →
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Jim talks to Robin Dunbar (of Dunbar’s number) about his new book, Friends: Understanding the Power of our Most Important Relationships… Jim talks with evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar, discoverer of Dunbar’s number, about his latest book, Friends: Understanding the Power of our Most Important Relationships. They cover the importance of friendship, the loneliness epidemic, loneliness as a signal rather than a … Continue reading EP140 Robin Dunbar on Friendship →
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John Robb & Jim meet for a timely discussion about the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan… John Robb & Jim meet for a timely discussion about the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the current mess at the Kabul airport, how the Taliban are controlling the flow of evacuations, likely backroom negotiations, dynamics of the intelligence and command … Continue reading Currents 042: John Robb on Afghanistan Withdrawal →
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Robert Tercek & Jim continue their conversation in this wide-ranging chat about learning & education… Robert Tercek & Jim continue their conversation in this wide-ranging chat about learning & education. They discuss the dematerialized economy, technological unemployment risk, underestimating software automation, AI as a career superpower, changing cost & quality of college, what education is for, Bryan Caplan’s … Continue reading EP139 Robert Tercek on Education Today →
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Jonathan Rowson & Jim continue their conversation by exploring Jonathan’s recent essay, Tasting the Pickle: Ten flavours of meta-crisis and the appetite for a new civilization… Jonathan Rowson & Jim continue their conversation by exploring Jonathan’s recent essay, Tasting the Pickle: Ten flavours of meta-crisis and the appetite for a new civilization. They cover contextualizing our entangled meta-crisis, finding better language, limits of … Continue reading Currents 041: Jonathan Rowson on Our Metacrisis Pickle →
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Jim Rutt Show producer, Jared Janes & Jim announce some changes to the podcast… Jim Rutt Show producer, Jared Janes & Jim announce some changes to the podcast, preview upcoming guests, talk about the Jim Rutt Show (JRS) origin story, Jim’s guest prep process, the evolution of JRS, its impact on Jim’s reading habits, reading … Continue reading Currents 040: Jim Rutt Show Changes & Reflections →
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W. Brian Arthur & Jim have a wide-ranging talk about his book, The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves… W. Brian Arthur & Jim have a wide-ranging talk about his book, The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves. They talk about the surprisingly little work on the nature of technology, invention … Continue reading EP138 W. Brian Arthur on the Nature of Technology →
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Alexander Beiner & Jim have a wide-ranging talk about Beiner’s recent essay “Who’s in Charge of Psilocybin?”… Alexander Beiner & Jim have a wide-ranging talk about Beiner’s recent essay “Who’s in Charge of Psilocybin?”. They discuss the state of play regarding psilocybin’s legality, its effectiveness in therapeutic contexts, therapeutic versus personal-growth uses, the value and limitations of … Continue reading Currents 039: Alexander Beiner on Psychedelic Turf Wars →
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Connor Leahy continues his conversion with Jim in this wide-ranging chat about Artificial Intelligence… Connor Leahy continues his conversion with Jim in this wide-ranging chat about his new GPT-J model, the background & approach of Aleph Alpha, attention in AI, our food maximizer & AGI risk, narrow algorithm impacts, proto-AGI, risk thresholds & timelines, safeguard complexities, slow vs fast AI take-off, Connor’s brilliantly … Continue reading Currents 038: Connor Leahy on Artificial Intelligence →
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Ken Stanley & Jim have a wide-ranging talk about one of his co-authored papers, “Designing neural networks through neuroevolution“… Ken Stanley & Jim have a wide-ranging talk about one of his co-authored papers, “Designing neural networks through neuroevolution“. They cover neuroevolution dynamics, resistance to evolutionary thinking in AI, the evolutionary timescale, understanding genetic algorithms, neural networks & … Continue reading EP137 Ken Stanley on Neuroevolution →
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Reason.fm co-founder Sam Harris talks to Jim about his TEDx talk, “The Genius You Need to Listen to Is Yourself”… Reason.fm co-founder Sam Harris talks to Jim about his TEDx talk, “The Genius You Need to Listen to Is Yourself”. They cover technology attention highjacking, putting our phones away, social media algorithms, playing games you can win, utilizing rules, natural social interactions, online … Continue reading Currents 037: Sam Harris on Surviving Our Smartphones →
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Songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, writer, and music educator Harvey Reid talks to Jim about his book, The Troubadour Chronicles: A History, A Celebration and A Manifesto… Songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, writer, and music educator Harvey Reid talks to Jim about his book, The Troubadour Chronicles: A History, A Celebration and A Manifesto. They talk about Harvey’s musical background, what a troubadour is, solo performance & collaborations, Jim … Continue reading EP136 Harvey Reid on Troubadour Music →
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Jim has a wide-ranging talk with Dennis Waters about his book, Behavior and Culture in One Dimension: Sequences, Affordances, and the Evolution of Complexity… Jim has a wide-ranging talk with Dennis Waters about his book, Behavior and Culture in One Dimension: Sequences, Affordances, and the Evolution of Complexity. They chat about the challenges of interdisciplinary work in academia, value in understanding … Continue reading EP135 Dennis Waters on Behavior & Culture in One Dimension →
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Forrest Landry & Jim continue their exploration of metaphysics by diving deep into the Non-Relative Ethics that arise from Forrest’s Immanent Metaphysics… Forrest Landry & Jim continue their exploration of metaphysics by diving deep into the Non-Relative Ethics that arise from Forrest’s Immanent Metaphysics. They cover ethical philosophies, defining effective choice, ethics vs morality, the relationship of choice & ethics, defining self beyond … Continue reading EP134 Forrest Landry on Non-Relative Ethics →
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Jim talks to Melanie Mitchell about her recent paper, “Why AI is Harder Than We Think”… Melanie Mitchell & Jim talk about her recent paper, “Why AI is Harder Than We Think”. They cover AI fantasies, self-driving cars, prediction failures, AI winters & summers, Melanie’s four fallacies, common sense, theory of mind, defining understanding, embodied cognition, the role … Continue reading Currents 036: Melanie Mitchell on Why AI is Hard →
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Steve Barbour talks to Jim about his company, Upstream Data Inc. — a company that uses natural gas to mine bitcoin… Steve Barbour talks to Jim about his company, Upstream Data Inc. — a company that uses natural gas to mine bitcoin. They cover the dynamics of excess natural gas release, how methane is normally vented or burnt up, … Continue reading Currents 035: Steve Barbour on Mining Bitcoin with Methane →
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Robert Tercek has a wide-ranging talk with Jim about his book, Vaporized: Solid Strategies for Success in a Dematerialized World… Robert Tercek talks to Jim about his book, Vaporized: Solid Strategies for Success in a Dematerialized World. They cover the usefulness of the vapor metaphor, centralization vs decentralization, the impact of closed application ecosystems, value in intangible assets, hardware … Continue reading EP133 Robert Tercek on Digital Strategies →
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Britt Adkins & Jim on the space industry: prioritization, funding, misconceptions, meaning, cultural & political impact, policy, and much more… Britt Adkins has a wide-ranging talk with Jim about the space industry. They explore prioritizing space funding & common misconceptions, power of the overview effect, global vs celestial community, cultural & political impacts, public participation strategies, … Continue reading EP132 Britt Adkins on Celestial Civilization →
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Samo Burja joins Jim to talk about the Consilience Project: a project that aims to create positive cultural change in unique ways… Samo Burja joins Jim to talk about the Consilience Project: a project that aims to create positive cultural change in unique ways. They cover its founding goals & approaches, big tech’s ability to amplify negative externalities, the … Continue reading Currents 034: Samo Burja on the Consilience Project →
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Jason Mauck talks to Jim about starting Constant Canopy and the dynamics, technologies & economics of innovative farming strategies… Jason Mauck talks to Jim about what lead him to farm, how & why he started Constant Canopy, agriculture innovation dynamics & economics, finding crop combinations, turning manure into methane, utilizing Biochar, acquiring a meat-packing business, building direct-to-consumer meat distribution … Continue reading EP131 Jason Mauck on #FarmWeird →
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Ken Stanley and Jim talk about his wide-ranging book Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective… Ken Stanley and Jim talk about his wide-ranging book Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective. They cover the no free lunch theorem, exploitations vs exploration, the myth & issues of objectives, the room of all images … Continue reading EP130 Ken Stanley on Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned →
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Connor Leahy has a wide-ranging chat with Jim about the state & future of Deep Learning… Connor Leahy has a wide-ranging chat with Jim about the state & future of Deep Learning. They cover the history of EleutherAI, how GPT-3 works, the dynamics & power of scaling laws, ideal sampling rates & sizes for models, data sets, … Continue reading Currents 033: Connor Leahy on Deep Learning →
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Stephanie Lepp & Jim have a wide-ranging talk on her two-time Webby Award winning video series, Deep Reckonings… Stephanie Lepp & Jim have a wide-ranging talk on her two-time Webby Award winning video series, Deep Reckonings. They start by covering the history & intentions of Deep Reckonings, deep fake technology, our post-truth crisis, and the pros & cons of irony. They then go on … Continue reading EP129 Stephanie Lepp on Deep Reckonings →
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Forrest Landry & Jim continue their exploration of Forrest’s Immanent Metaphysics by diving deep into its Incommensuration Theorem (ICT)… Forrest Landry & Jim continue their exploration of metaphysics by diving deep into a theorem that arises from Forrest’s Immanent Metaphysics called Incommensuration Theorem (ICT). They start by defining the key concepts of ICT: symmetry & continuity, domains & their three elements, what it … Continue reading EP128 Forrest Landry on Immanent Metaphysics: Part 3 →
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Jonathan Rowson & Jim have a wide-ranging talk about his book, The Moves That Matter: A Chess Grandmaster on the Game of Life… Jonathan Rowson & Jim have a wide-ranging talk about his book, The Moves That Matter: A Chess Grandmaster on the Game of Life. They cover chess as a meta metaphor, partial vs full info, randomness, freedom, … Continue reading EP127 Jonathan Rowson on The Moves That Matter →
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Jordan Gruber & James Fadiman talk with Jim about their new book, Your Symphony of Selves: Discover and Understand More of Who We Are… Jordan Gruber & James Fadiman talk to Jim about their book, Your Symphony of Selves: Discover and Understand More of Who We Are. They cover our multiple selves, self vs mood, arguing with ourselves, David Bowie, history of the … Continue reading EP126 Jordan Gruber & James Fadiman on Our Symphony of Selves →
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Samo Burja & Jim continue their convo about Great Founder Theory: history, bureaucracy vs delegation, competition, ambition, empire theory, and much more… Samo Burja & Jim continue their conversation about his book, Great Founder Theory. They talk about Samo’s interest in exploring why there’s never been an immortal society, lack of historical Greece documentation, defining functional bureaucracy & … Continue reading EP125 Samo Burja on Societal Decline: Part 2 →
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Tyson Yunkaporta joins Jim for another wide-ranging yarn that covers DMT & machine elves, survivance, ego death, selling souls, and much more… Tyson Yunkaporta joins Jim for another wide-ranging yarn that starts off with DMT & machine elves. They cover Jim’s misspent youth, police violence, nuance vs Occam’s razor, Tyson’s impressions of GameB & the … Continue reading Currents 032: Tyson Yunkaporta on Spirits, GameB & Protopias →
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Former Ford CEO, Jim Hackett & Jim have a wide-ranging talk about the history & future of electric cars, the automotive industry, and much more… Former Ford CEO, Jim Hackett & Jim have a wide-ranging talk about the history & future of electric cars. They cover Ford & Edison’s first electric car, the current state … Continue reading EP124 Jim Hackett on Ford, Electric Cars & More →
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Trent Loos talks to Jim about his multi-generational Nebraska-based ranching operation… Trent Loos talks to Jim about his multi-generational Nebraska-based ranching operation. They cover the deep history of the family ranch, types of animals, dealing with predators, pork production & breeding, the decline in quality of industrial pork, beef production and breeds, grass vs grain-fed … Continue reading Currents 031: Trent Loos on Family Ranching →
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Jamie Wheal talks to Jim about his new book, Recapture the Rapture: Rethinking God, Sex, and Death in a World That’s Lost Its Mind… Jamie Wheal talks to Jim about his new book, Recapture the Rapture: Rethinking God, Sex, and Death in a World That’s Lost Its Mind. They talk about the world losing its mind & the … Continue reading EP123 Jamie Wheal on Recapturing the Rapture →
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Daniel Schmachtenberger & Jim talk about his newly launched project, The Consilience Project… Daniel Schmachtenberger & Jim talk about his newly launched project, The Consilience Project. They start by covering some background for the project: why start it, primary focuses, cultural renaissance, the role of education & press, eroding knowledge commons, rapidly changing culture & scales, and learning from … Continue reading Currents 030: Daniel Schmachtenberger on The Consilience Project →
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Ashley Colby & Jim talk about her book, Subsistence Agriculture in the US, moving to Uruguay, starting the Rizoma Field School, and much more… Ashley Colby & Jim start this episode by talking about her book, Subsistence Agriculture in the US: Reconnecting to Work, Nature and Community. They cover Gemeinschaft vs Gesellschaft, Dual Process Theory, bottom-up change, arriving … Continue reading EP122 Ashley Colby on Subsistence Agriculture →
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Joanne Goldblum & Colleen Shaddox talk to Jim about their book, Broke in America: Seeing, Understanding, and Ending U.S. Poverty… Joanne Goldblum & Colleen Shaddox talk to Jim about their book, Broke in America: Seeing, Understanding, and Ending U.S. Poverty. They cover the “give a man fish” fallacy, poverty quicksand, two vs one-parent households, nurture vs nature, poverty’s impact on children, poverty definition & … Continue reading EP121 Broke in America with Joanne Goldblum & Colleen Shaddox →
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James Ehrlich & Jim continue their conversation on ReGen Villages: smart houses & neighborhoods, regulatory hurdles, status/progress, and much more… James Ehrlich & Jim continue their conversation on ReGen Villages. They cover smart houses in dumb neighborhoods, defining smart, what COVID exposed about cities, ReGen Village dynamics & their permacultural core, rural jobs, UBI, rural regulatory challenges, village funding & costs, electric … Continue reading EP120 James Ehrlich on ReGen Villages Part 2 →
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Max Borders & Jim continue their last conversation on his book, After Collapse: The End of America and the Rebirth of Her Ideals… Max Borders & Jim continue their last conversation on his book, After Collapse: The End of America and the Rebirth of Her Ideals. They cover fully automated luxury communism, utilizing traditional economics & markets, Elinor Ostrom’s commons, institutional experimentation, post-scarcity economics, Joseph Pine‘s experience … Continue reading EP119 Max Borders on Post-Collapse →
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Matt Ridley talks to Jim about his latest book, How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom… Matt Ridley talks to Jim about his latest book, How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom. They cover innovation vs invention, improbable order, the value of technological innovation, the importance of the steam engine, innovation as a team sport, … Continue reading EP118 Matt Ridley on How Innovation Works →
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Samo Burja talks to Jim about his book, Great Founder Theory: theories & limits of history, institutions, design vs evolution, declining empires, and much more… Samo Burja talks to Jim about his freely available book, Great Founder Theory. They cover long-lasting societies, theories & limits of history, cultures that prioritize documentation, long-term priorities, institutional organization, social technologies, design … Continue reading EP117 Samo Burja on Societal Decline →
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Doug Erwin talks to Jim about his book, The Cambrian Explosion: The Construction of Animal Biodiversity… Doug Erwin talks to Jim about his book, The Cambrian Explosion: The Construction of Animal Biodiversity. They cover the unprecedentedly rapid evolution of life seen during the Cambrian explosion (approx 540 million BCE), archeological dating techniques & accuracy, micro-evolution vs macro-evolution, environmental potential, … Continue reading EP116 Doug Erwin on the Cambrian Explosion →
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Jim talks to Vance Crowe about what led him to work at Monsanto, how he discovered & uses the “Well_Actually” Graph, GameB, VR & much more… In this currents episode, Jim talks to Vance Crowe about what led him to work at Monsanto & the dynamics of its public narrative, how he discovered the “Well_Actually” Graph, limitations of PR firms … Continue reading Currents 029: Vance Crowe on the “Well-Actually” Graph →
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Max Borders with Jim on his new book, After Collapse: The End of America and the Rebirth of Her Ideals: GameB, complexity, climate, wokism… Max Borders talks to Jim about his new book, After Collapse: The End of America and the Rebirth of Her Ideals. They cover the definition of collapse, the potential role of debt in … Continue reading EP115 Max Borders on America’s Collapse →
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John Bunzl talks to Jim about the multi-faceted approach to global cooperation he created, Simpol – The Simultaneous Policy… John Bunzl talks to Jim about his Simpol approach to global cooperation. They cover simultaneous implementation, connections to GameB, feasible viable support, the first-mover disadvantage, regulatory chill, the veto issue, destructive global competition, utilizing competition & cooperation, … Continue reading EP114 John Bunzl on his Simpol Solution →
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Jim & Simon DeDeo on his recent paper, “From Probability to Consilience: How Explanatory Values Implement Bayesian Reasoning“… In this currents episode, Jim talks to Simon DeDeo about his recently co-authored (with Zachary Wojtowicz) paper, “From Probability to Consilience: How Explanatory Values Implement Bayesian Reasoning“. They cover its connection to AI & human development, description vs power in explanation, … Continue reading Currents 028: Simon DeDeo on Explaining Explanation →
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Zak Stein & Jim have a wide-ranging talk about the history & dynamics of hierarchical complexity & human development… Zak Stein & Jim have a wide-ranging talk about hierarchical complexity: its history, horizontal vs vertical development, the chunking property in development, emergence & evolution, success vs understanding, child development, the development advantage of youth, representational … Continue reading EP113 Zak Stein on Hierarchical Complexity →
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Charles Hoskinson & Jim on blockchain history, his history with the Ethereum project & what led him to found Cardano, a 3rd gen project, and much more… In this currents episode, Charles Hoskinson talks with Jim about the history of blockchain projects, his history with the Ethereum project and what led him to found Cardano, a … Continue reading Currents 027: Charles Hoskinson on Cardano Blockchain Project →
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Annie Duke & Jim have a wide-ranging talk about how key themes in her last two books lead to making better bets & decisions… Annie Duke & Jim talk about some of the key themes in her last two books. They cover how she became a championship level poker player, the deep differences between poker … Continue reading EP112 Annie Duke on Bets & Better Decisions →
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Anatol Lieven & Jim have a wide-ranging talk about his latest book, Climate Change and the Nation State: The Realist Case… Anatol Lieven & Jim talk about his latest book, Climate Change and the Nation State: The Realist Case. They cover motivating populations to take actions on climate change, the key role of nations & nationalism, the huge … Continue reading EP111 Anatol Lieven on Climate & Nationalism →
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Brad Kershner & Jim on his book, Understanding Educational Complexity: Integrating Practices and Perspectives for 21st Century Leadership… Brad Kershner talks to Jim about his book, Understanding Educational Complexity: Integrating Practices and Perspectives for 21st Century Leadership. They cover how Brad defines complexity, key contextual aspects of education, the four quadrants of Integral Theory & how he used … Continue reading EP110 Brad Kershner on Education & Complexity →
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Bill Ottman & Jim have a wide-ranging talk on the state of social media and his open-source social platform, Minds.com… In this currents episode, Bill Ottman & Jim have a wide-ranging talk on the state of social media and his open-source social platform (Minds.com). They talk about what makes Minds different than other social networks: open-source, community-owned, profit-shared, decentralized, … Continue reading Currents 026: Bill Ottman on Minds.com →
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Forrest Landry & Jim build on the foundation they built in his last JRS episode to continue to flesh out Forrest’s Immanent Metaphysics… Forrest Landry & Jim build on the foundation they built in his last JRS episode to continue to flesh out Forrest’s Immanent Metaphysics. They explore the self, subject/object relationship, perception, the nature … Continue reading EP109 Forrest Landry on Immanent Metaphysics: Part 2 →
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Bernard Baars talks to Jim about some of the key ideas in his book, On Consciousness: Science & Subjectivity… Bernard Baars talks to Jim about some of the key ideas in his book, On Consciousness: Science & Subjectivity. They start by covering some of the history of the scientific study of consciousness & its taboo reputation in science, the … Continue reading EP108 Bernard Baars on Consciousness →
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In this Currents episode, Ben Goertzel & Jim have a wide-ranging talk about the urgent need for decentralized tech platforms. They cover Jim’s recent banning from Facebook & how it might have happened, the danger of kafkaesque algorithms & the challenge of building AI’s that explain their decisions, the challenges around creating alternatives to big tech, politics power & … Continue reading Currents 025: Ben Goertzel on Decentralizing Social Media →
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Tristan Harris & Jim on his hugely successful documentary, The Social Dilemma: social media good, harms, regulation, bold interventions, and much more… Tristan Harris talks to Jim about his hugely successful documentary, The Social Dilemma. They start by identifying the good aspects of social media, the obvious harms & exploitation tactics, AI-enabled race to the bottom dynamics, digital … Continue reading EP107 Tristan Harris on Our Social Dilemma →
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BJ Campbell has a wide-ranging talk with Jim about article, “Social Justice is a Crowdsourced Religion“, reflects on the future of wokeism, and much more… In this Currents episode, BJ Campbell has a wide-ranging talk with Jim about his article, “Social Justice is a Crowdsourced Religion“: the history of the wokeism & how it can be seen as a … Continue reading Currents 024: BJ Campbell on the Woke Religion →
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Michael Stevens talks to Jim about some of the ideas & stories in his book, The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science… Michael Stevens talks to Jim about some of the ideas & stories in his book, The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science: what the great method debate is & how Popper & Kuhn added to the topic, falsification & … Continue reading EP106 Michael Strevens on the Irrational History of Science →
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Christof Koch & Jim have a wide-ranging conversation about the science of consciousness and his book, The Feeling of Life Itself: Why Consciousness Is Widespread But Can’t Be Computed… Christof Koch and Jim have a wide-ranging conversation about the science of consciousness. They start by exploring some key topics brought up in his book, The … Continue reading EP105 Christof Koch on Consciousness →
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Joe Henrich talks to Jim about some of the key insights from his book, The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar & Particularly Prosperous. Joe Henrich talks to Jim about some of the key insights from his book, The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar … Continue reading EP104 Joe Henrich on WEIRD People →
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Former U.S. Capitol Police Chief, Terry Gainer talks to Jim about his views on the January 6th riot at the U.S. Capitol… In this Currents episode, Former U.S. Capitol Police Chief, Terry Gainer talks to Jim about his views on the January 6th riot at the U.S. Capitol. He discusses shortcomings in preparations, intelligence, and operations, … Continue reading Currents 023: Terry Gainer on the January 6th Riot →
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Jim talks to Curtis Yarvin about his recent article, “2020, the year of everything fake”: presentism, history, COVID-19 response failures, and much more… In this Currents episode, Jim talks to Curtis Yarvin about some key points in his recent article, “2020, the year of everything fake“. They start by talking about the ability &/or inability to take the … Continue reading Currents 022: Curtis Yarvin on Institutional Failure →
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John Robb talks to Jim about the Jan 6th events at the US Capitol: intel & ops failures, opensource insurgency, social media, Trump, and much more… In this Currents episode, Jim talks to John Robb about the Jan 6th events at the US Capitol. They cover the intelligence & operations failures, the event as an example of domestic … Continue reading Currents 021: John Robb on Jan 6th, 2021 →
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James Ehrlich talks to Jim about ReGen Villages: community types, de-urbanization & rural living, materialism, agriculture, and much more… James Ehrlich talks to Jim about what makes a ReGen Village, potential community organization types, how ReGen Villages could learn from each other, utilizing machine learning, working with existing government regulations, the importance & urgent need … Continue reading EP103 James Ehrlich on ReGen Villages →
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Debora Spar & Jim have a wide-ranging chat on some of the insights in her book, Work Mate Marry Love: How Machines Shape Our Human Destiny. Debora Spar and Jim have a wide-ranging conversation on some of the insights in her book, Work Mate Marry Love: How Machines Shape Our Human Destiny. They start by focusing on our … Continue reading EP102 Debora Spar on Technological Impacts on Culture →
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Clayton Banks talks to Jim about essential tools & digital literacy, why & how he started Silicon Harlem, community dev, the FCC, and much more… Clayton Banks talks to Jim about bridging the digital divide & the importance of internet access, essential tools & digital literacy, prioritizing digital infrastructure, possible COVID-19 impacts on the digital divide, capitalism … Continue reading EP101 Clayton Banks on the Digital Divide →
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Sam Bowles talks to Jim about his book, A Cooperative Species: Human Reciprocity and Its Evolution: competition, hierarchy, game theory, and much more… Sam Bowles talks to Jim about his book, A Cooperative Species: Human Reciprocity and Its Evolution, co-authored with Herbert Gintis. They start by exploring cooperation in hunter-gatherer living: how human cooperation is different from other … Continue reading EP100 Sam Bowles on Our Cooperative Nature →
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Barbara Oakley talks to Jim about fluency across domains, understanding-centered learning, education evolution, online learning, and much more… In this Currents episode, Jim and Barbara Oakley start by talking about her eclectic background & career, then go on to talk about her article, How I Rewired My Brain to Become Fluent in Math: how a liberal arts person learned advanced … Continue reading Currents 020: Barbara Oakley on Teaching Fluency →
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Jason Wiener talks to Jim about prioritizing missions in business, downfalls of profit-maximizing, employee ownership structures, and much more… Practicing business entity attorney Jason Wiener talks to Jim about prioritizing the mission in a business, downfalls of profit-maximizing models & intentions, employee ownership structures, understanding & planning for trade-offs, adaptive vs rigid structures, types of fundraising & … Continue reading EP99 Jason Wiener on Alternative Business Structures →
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Morag Gamble talks to Jim about the history & dynamics of permaculture, education, regenerative farming, Crystal Waters EcoVillage, and much more… Morag Gamble talks to Jim about the history & definition of permaculture, the different places & styles in which it can be implemented, the best ways of introducing it to others, seeing permaculture as … Continue reading EP98 Morag Gamble on Permaculture →
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Emery Brown talks to Jim about anesthesiology as a probe on consciousness, brain networks & relationships, EEG dose calibration, and much more… Emery Brown joins Jim as the first in a series of guests exploring the science of consciousness. They cover anesthesiology as a probe on consciousness, types of brain observation (EEG & fMRI), propofol’s impact … Continue reading EP97 Emery Brown on Consciousness & Anesthesia →
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Forrest Landry talks to Jim about his immanent metaphysics theory: the self, choice, interaction, time, soundness, mind vs matter, and much more… Forrest Landry talks to Jim about the value of metaphysics, how his immanent metaphysics compare to past metaphysical theories, his unique definition of self & its relationship with choice, quantum foundations, the nature … Continue reading EP96 Forrest Landry on Immanent Metaphysics: Part 1 →
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Alexander Bard talks to Jim about Syntheism’s new take on theology, religious history, science, Zoroastrianism, Facebook, wokeness, and much more… Alexander Bard talks to Jim about Syntheism’s new take on theology, the purpose of & roles in religion, post-contemporary God, the role of science in religious history, Zoroastrian history & its western influence, the digital exodus, the … Continue reading EP95 Alexander Bard on God in the Internet Age →
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Shahin Farshchi talks to Jim about self-driving tech: 5 automation levels, safeguards, the consumer market, costs, policy, and much more… Shahin Farshchi talks to Jim about self-driving technology. They cover Waymo’s driverless taxi launch, the 5 levels of automation, teleoperation, redundant safeguards, self-driving deployment approaches & challenges, planning for corner cases, consumer market speculations, operating costs, Tesla’s aspirations & shadow testing … Continue reading EP94 Shahin Farshchi on Self-Driving Tech →
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Jim talks to Alexander Beiner about his new article on Indigenous Narcissism: western cultural norms, tribalism, social media, ethics, and much more… In this Currents episode, Jim and Alexander Beiner have a wide-ranging chat about his recent article on Indigenous Narcissism. They cover western cultural norms, tribalism & belonging, social media as a tribal battlefield, addiction dynamics of social media, … Continue reading Currents 019: Alexander Beiner on Indigenous Narcissism →
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Brent Cooper talks to Jim about the meta-crisis, critique, politics, GameB, monetary theory, climate policy, meta/post-modernism, and much more… Brent Cooper talks to Jim about his academic & intellectual background, the under-appreciation of sociology, the meta-crisis, useful critique, time-scales & approaches to solving the meta-crisis, Jim & Brent’s political perspectives, GameB values, monetary theory, smuggling bad ideas, … Continue reading EP93 Brent Cooper on Critique, Consensus & Politics →
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Alexa Clay talks to Jim about intentional communities: diversity, governance, cult dynamics, longevity, scale, norms, values, rituals, and much more… Alexa Clay talks to Jim about similar characteristics of intentional communities & startups, common personalities & intentions in intentional community, meeting their need for diverse skillsets & demographics, governance approaches, avoiding cult dynamics, planning for generational … Continue reading EP92 Alexa Clay on Intentional Communities →
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Joe Brewer talks to Jim about applied cultural evolution, planetary human impact, regenerative agro, collapse, ethics, social capital, and much more… Joe Brewer talks to Jim about the power & elements of applied cultural evolution, carrying capacity & human impacts on the planet, industrial vs regenerative agriculture, the likelihood of large-scale collapse & mass extinction … Continue reading EP91 Joe Brewer on Applied Cultural Evolution →
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Joshua Epstein talks to Jim about agent-based modeling, differential equations, computational archeology, COVID-19 failures, and much more… Joshua Epstein talks to Jim about Agent-Based Modeling (ABM) as a powerful tool in the social sciences. They start with the history of Sugarscape, an early ABM framework, the dynamics of ABM systems, types of agents, ABM vs … Continue reading EP90 Joshua Epstein on Agent-Based Modeling →
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Lene Rachel Andersen talks to Jim about how metamodernity addresses our complex problems, postmodernism, meaning-making, education, and much more… Lene Rachel Andersen talks to Jim about the growing number of complex challenges we face today, the need for cultures to evolve, our cultural history & the need to integrate pre-modern norms back into culture, the value & danger … Continue reading EP89 Lene Rachel Andersen on Metamodernity →
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Nancy Hillis & Bruce Sawhill talk to Jim about the similarities of complexity science & art: emergence, order & chaos, luck, and much more… Nancy Hillis & Bruce Sawhill talk to Jim about the commonalities & dynamics of complexity science & art: innovation & imitation, breaking rules, inseparability, phase transitions, combinatorics & restraints, aesthetics, process vs result orientation, simplicity, paradox, … Continue reading EP88 Nancy Hillis & Bruce Sawhill on Art & Complexity →
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Jim talks to Euvie Ivanova & Mike Gilliland about their Future Thinkers Smart Village: region, scaling, governance, economics, fundraising, and much more… In this Currents episode, Jim talks to Future Thinkers co-founders Euvie Ivanova & Mike Gilliland about their new Smart Village. They cover details about their selected bioregion, their short & long-term building & scaling plans, governance approaches, the economic models for residents & emphasis … Continue reading Currents 018: The Future Thinkers Smart Village →
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Jim talks to Bret Weinstein about his banning from Facebook, censorship on Twitter, the aspirations for his Unity 2020 movement, and much more… In this Currents episode, Jim talks to Bret Weinstein about the possible explanations for his banning from Facebook, social media & ideological bubbles, the history & goals for Bret’s Unity 2020 movement & its ballot … Continue reading Currents 017: Bret Weinstein on Unity 2020 →
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Joscha Bach talks to Jim about his views on popular consciousness theories, thinkers, dynamics, artificial intelligence, and much more… Joscha Bach and Jim start by talking about the difference between mind & brain, and the body & environment’s connection to mind & emotions. Joscha then offers his views on some popular consciousness theories & thinkers: consciousness … Continue reading EP87 Joscha Bach on Theories of Consciousness →
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Nadav Zeimer talks to Jim about being a high school principal, our educational failures, dynamics of his proposed academic platform, and much more… Nadav Zeimer talks to Jim about his background & how it informs his work as a high school principal, the educational system’s failure to build the right skills, consumption vs information literacy, COVID-19 impacts … Continue reading EP86 Nadav Zeimer on Educational Reform →
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Jim talks to Robin Hanson about whether we live in a simulation or not, why it matters if we do, simulation types, the Fermi paradox, and much more… In this Currents episode, Jim talks to Robin Hanson about whether we live in a simulation or not, why it would matter if we do, his view of Nick Bostrom‘s simulation logic, Boltzmann brains & … Continue reading Currents 016: Robin Hanson on Are We Living In A Simulation? →
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Gar Alperovitz talks Jim about system dynamics of ownership, control, politics, economics, US unions, governance, evolution, and much more… Gar Alperovitz talks to Jim about what his definition of systems & their relationship to ownership & control, economic & political components in systems, GameB, the legitimacy crisis & systems collapse, the failure mode of the … Continue reading EP85 Gar Alperovitz on Reinventing Our Systems →
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In this Currents episode, Jim talks to Melanie Mitchell & Jessica Flack about the complexity of COVID, randomness, robustness, collective intelligence, misinfo, and much more… In this Currents episode, Jim talks to Melanie Mitchell & Jessica Flack about their recent Aeon article, Uncertain times. Why R(0) is not a good measure for COVID contagion, network contagion & super spreaders, global non-linear … Continue reading Currents 015: Jessica Flack & Melanie Mitchell on Complexity →
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In this Currents episode, Jim talks to Steve LeVine about his article, Remote Work Is Killing the Hidden Trillion-Dollar Office Economy, the US city exodus, and much more… In this Currents episode, Jim talks to Steve LeVine about his article, Remote Work Is Killing the Hidden Trillion-Dollar Office Economy, cultural hysteresis & homeostasis, the challenge of predicting post-pandemic changes & looking to history, … Continue reading Currents 014: Steve LeVine on COVID-19 Futures →
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Former Sec of Defense William Perry & Tom Collina talk about their book, The Button: The New Nuclear Arms Race & Presidential Power, and much more… Former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry & Tom Z. Collina of the Ploughshares Fund talk to Jim about their book, The Button: The New Nuclear Arms Race and Presidential … Continue reading EP84 William Perry & Tom Collina on The Nuclear Button →
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Michel Bauwens talks to Jim about P2P plurality, agro & regeneration, capitalist impact on social media, blockchains, cosmo-localism, and much more… Michel Bauwens talks to Jim about the forms of P2P (peer to peer) implementations & core elements, cosmo-local production, P2P in agriculture & regenerative processes, artificial rivalrous dynamics, capitalist impacts on social media & … Continue reading EP83 Michel Bauwens on Our Commons Transition →
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Rob Malda (AKA: CmdrTaco) talks to Jim about the history & tech of Slashdot while speculating on what social media could learn from it. In this Currents episode, Jim talks to Rob Malda (AKA: CmdrTaco) about the history & creation of Slashdot, its opensource tech, rapid growth & eventual decline, unique moderation system & community involvement, utilization of … Continue reading Currents 013: Rob Malda on the Slashdot Story →
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Hanzi Freinacht talks to Jim about political metamodernism, Gameb, sensemaking, conspiracy, top-down vs bottom-up tactics, coherent pluralism, and much more… In a wide-ranging all-new episode, Hanzi Freinacht talks to Jim about the dynamics of political metamodernism & commonalities with Gameb, our meta-crisis & diminished sensemaking capabilities, our culture of alienation, conspiracy theories, collective sensemaking, negative impacts of market … Continue reading EP82 Hanzi Freinacht on Building a Metamodern Future →
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Renée DiResta talks to Jim about social media dynamics, foreign influence, disinformation vs misinformation, political ads, conspiracy, and much more… Renée DiResta talks to Jim about her work at the Standford Internet Observatory, identifying foreign social media influence, the challenge of defining state media, her work on the Election Integrity Project, sourcing social media data, foreign vs domestic disinformation … Continue reading EP81 Renée DiResta on Social Media Warfare →
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Daniel Schmachtenberger talks to Jim about sensemaking & how it’s impacted by algorithms, addiction, authority, conspiracy, education, and much more… Daniel Schmachtenberger talks to Jim about the increasing importance of sensemaking in our globalized culture, internet algorithm impacts on narrative warfare, digital dopamine hijacking & addiction dynamics, dangerous contemporary authority dynamics, global government vs governance … Continue reading EP80 Daniel Schmachtenberger on Better Sensemaking →
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Seth Lloyd talks to Jim about the fundamentals of quantum physics, quantum computing, seeing the universe as a quantum computer, and much more… Seth Lloyd starts this episode by talking to Jim about the fundamentals of quantum physics: the quantum vs classical world, quantum interpretations, causality & randomness, the many-worlds theory, entanglement, and coherence. They … Continue reading EP79 Seth Lloyd on Our Quantum Universe →
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Andrew Taggart talks to Jim about philosophy, our psychotherapeutic culture, the good life & virtue, narcissism, community living, dying well, and more… In this Currents episode, Jim talks to Andrew Taggart about what philosophy is & once was, the impacts of our psychotherapeutic culture, the good life & virtue, narcissism, friends of utility, changing family dynamics, GameB, close community living, … Continue reading Currents 012: Andrew Taggart on Narcissism, Culture & Dying →
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Ran Abramitzky talks to Jim about the kibbutz movement’s history, social & economic impact, family life, other egalitarian projects, and more… Ran Abramitzky talks to Jim about his book, The Mystery of the Kibbutz: history of the kibbutz movement, social and economic impact in Israel, group governance, family life, the role of coherence & homogeneity, economic forces vs … Continue reading EP78 Ran Abramitzky on the Mystery of the Kibbutz →
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Kamal Sinclair talks with Jim about fiction & science, the power of storytelling, new media & tech, VR, augmented & mixed reality, and much more… Kamal Sinclair talks with Jim about being an art doula, the role of fiction in science, the power of storytelling, impacts of new media & technology, mind & perception, the Question Bridge project’s … Continue reading EP77 Kamal Sinclair on Science, Storytelling & VR →
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Max Borders talks to Jim about singularities, social innovation, dysfunctional politics, democracy, vaccines, decentralization, cryptocurrency, and much more… Max Borders talks to Jim about how he sees the role of the futurist, optimism, the characteristics of singularities, types of social innovation, collective intelligence, signaling systems & incentives, our dysfunctional &/or out-dated politics, analyzing our democracy, re-embracing … Continue reading EP76 Max Borders on the Social Singularity →
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Nick Chater talks to Jim about his flat mind theory, depth psychology, the grand illusion, memory, emotion, confabulation, and much more… Nick Chater talks with Jim about his bold argument that the human mind is a lot flatter than we think. That what we think of as “answers from our mental depths” are an illusion. … Continue reading EP75 Nick Chater: “The Mind Is Flat” →
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Daniel Christian Wahl talks with Jim about GameB, recycling, development, eastern perspectives, consciousness, community, and much more… Daniel Christian Wahl talks with Jim about living at a Findhorn eco-village, humanity as a capstone species, regenerative vs sustainable, the three horizons & GameB, night soil in urban & rural contexts, recycling essential resources, personal & collective development, defining … Continue reading EP74 Daniel Christian Wahl on Regeneration Dynamics →
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James Lindsay talks with Jim about the history of social progress, illiberalism from postmodernism & its impact on science & culture, and much more… James Lindsay talks with Jim about his parody scholarly article project, intentions of his latest book, liberalism as a process, history of social progress, illiberalism from the left, the history of postmodernism & … Continue reading EP73 James Lindsay on Cynical Theories →
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Joscha Bach talks to Jim about AI, human vs animal intelligence, GPT-3, realism, emergence, magic, hybrid AI approaches, cybernetics, and much more… Joscha Bach talks to Jim about better understanding ourselves via AI, narrow vs general AI incentives, AGI & human-level intelligence, philosophy of AI, limitations of the human brain, GPT-2 & 3, understanding language, layers of … Continue reading EP72 Joscha Bach on Minds, Machines & Magic →
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Jim talks to Robin Hanson about social signaling & their tribal roots, politics, fighting RightTalkism, rationality, social media, wokeism, and more… In this Currents episode, Jim talks to Robin Hanson about RightTalkism & our word fixation, social signaling, corporate speech, police reform, education & IQ, legalism vs Confucianism in China, Protestant & Catholics wars, floating … Continue reading Currents 011: Robin Hanson on RightTalkism →
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Philip Howard talks with Jim about organized & paid disinformation, tech & politics, the lie machine, journalism, privately-held data, and much more… Philip Howard talks with Jim about the impacts of organized & paid digital disinformation, the interconnection of technology & politics, foreign election influence, how narrow targeting compares to older direct marketing strategies, political advertising, … Continue reading EP71 Philip Howard on Computational Propaganda →
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Art Brock & Ferananda Ibarra talk with Jim about the dynamics of currencies as seen in education, culture, reputation, relationships, markets, and much more… Art Brock & Ferananda Ibarra talk with Jim about the dynamics & characteristics of currencies, credentials, competence, reputation, the broad range of non-monetary currencies, relational-backed social currency, pros & cons of scarcity … Continue reading EP70 Art Brock & Ferananda Ibarra on Currencies →
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Rachel Haywire talks to Jim about running for president, acting vs philosophizing, the art right, aesthetics, today’s left & right, dark bohemianism, and much more… Rachel Haywire talks to Jim about running for president in the transhumanist party, her Elixer Salon, her Pulling out of the Narrative article, GameB, acting vs philosophizing, taking our work & selves seriously, neo-reactionaries, understanding & … Continue reading EP69 Rachel Haywire on Free Thinking & Expression →
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Jim talks to Tyson Yunkaporta about what makes us a custodial species, time, increase vs growth, complex systems intervention, domestication, and much more… In this Currents episode, Jim talks to Tyson Yunkaporta about seeing humanity as a custodial species, our unique capacities, creation myths, the significance of the human hand, haptic cognition, tool making & … Continue reading Currents 010: Tyson Yunkaporta on Humans As Custodial Species →
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Mara Zepeda talks to Jim about co-founding a community platform, capital & creativity, alternative investment, extractive growth, empowering cooperatives, and much more… Mara Zepeda talks to Jim about what led Mara to co-found the Switchboard community platform, the ask & offer dynamic, GameB, the interaction of capital & creativity, Jim’s entrepreneurial history, alternative investment structures & unjust financial systems, … Continue reading EP68 Mara Zepeda on Innovative Collaboration →
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Tomas Björkman talks to Jim about what made Nordic countries thrive, psychological development, the disappearance & possible re-emergence of the Bildung, and much more… Tomas Björkman talks to Jim about the danger of reifying systems, understanding the Bildung, what made the Nordic countries exceptional, inner development, Scandinavia’s retreat centers, cultural modernity, the self-authoring shift & emergent levels … Continue reading EP67 Tomas Björkman on The Nordic Secret →
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Jim talks to Dr. Gregg Henriques about his tree of knowledge & meta-cultural transition, justification theory, meaning, consciousness, integrative pluralism, and much more… In this Currents episode, Jim talks to Dr. Gregg Henriques about complexity in his tree of knowledge & how it’s connects to meta-cultural transition, the power of justification theory, understanding meaning & … Continue reading Currents 009: Gregg Henriques on Theory Of Meta-Cultural Transition →
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Tyson Yunkaport talks to Jim about GameB, indigenous cognition, elders & initiation, growth, spirit, sustainability agents, cryptocurrencies, cultural evolution, and much more… Tyson Yunkaport talks to Jim about GameB, woodworking as a theory of mind & information entanglement, interconnected indigenous cognition, the iceman, taming crocodile, culture & systems designed to check narcissism, context-dependent leadership, the role of … Continue reading EP66 Tyson Yunkaporta on Indigenous Knowledge →
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Tyson Yunkaporta talks to Jim about his Apalech Clan, human domestication, connected bioregions, cultural narcissism, value in ordeal, indigenous instinct, and much more… An important new thinker only comes around every few years. Tyson Yunkaport is that thinker right now. We talk about his amazing new book, Sand Talk, in which he looks at the … Continue reading EP65 Tyson Yunkaporta on Indigenous Complexity →
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Colin Wright talks with Jim about the new evolution deniers & its impact on his academic career, sex & gender, nature AND nurture, postmodernism, whiskey, and more… Colin Wright talks with Jim about his critiques of the new evolution deniers & the impact it had on his search for academic faculty positions, the connections & differences between sex … Continue reading EP64 Colin Wright on The New Evolution Deniers →
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Michel Bauwens talks to Jim about the P2P Foundation, markets & commons, alternative collaborative systems, seed to niche to norm, value, the future, and much more… P2P Foundation founder & director Michel Bauwens talks to Jim about being a ‘vision coordinator’, history & dynamics of peer to peer (P2P) collaboration, P2P in markets & commons, the evolution … Continue reading EP63 Michel Bauwens on P2P & Commons →
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In this Currents episode, Jim talks to astrophysicist Christopher Conselice about his recent paper that estimates the number of communicating intelligent civilizations in the galaxy. Topics include: the history of the ‘life off earth’ question, current methods of looking for extraterrestrial intelligence, how Chris builds on and modifies the Drake equation, supernovas & star formation, … Continue reading Currents 008: Christopher Conselice: Finding Extraterrestrial Intelligence →
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Zak Stein talks with Jim about tech in education, what advertising is teaching us, the role of religion in education, self-transcendence, Zak’s 13 social miracles, and much more… Zak Stein talks with Jim about the pros & cons of technology in education & the role of the teacher, unrealized education potentials in TV & internet, what … Continue reading EP62 Zak Stein on Education, Tech & Religion →
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In this Currents episode, Jim talks to Rebel Wisdom founder David Fuller about what the IDW is & how it relates to GameB, common IDW perspectives & its prescient points, the decline of journalism & sensemaking, postmodernism, how Integral theory views the IDW, memetic mediation, coherence & plurality, the IDW’s future, online platform limitations, the value of critique, types of audience … Continue reading Currents 007: David Fuller on the IDW →
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Howard Rheingold talks with Jim about his involvement in early computing & the internet, collaboration, internet risks, privacy, COVID-19, attention, and much more… Howard Rheingold talks with Jim about his interest & experiences with early computers & the internet, online collaboration & sharing, The Source & Well.com, ‘realtime’ online tribes, 3 risks to the future of the … Continue reading EP61 Howard Rheingold on Our Digital Past & Future →
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In this Currents episode, Jim talks to Jim Coan about social recession, social origins & impacts on humanity, emergent group collaboration, ‘selfing’ beyond the individual, bioenergetic resource management & its connection to social isolation & depression, physicological weathering & health risks of involuntary isolation, mental impacts leading to less COVID-19 social distancing, dynamics of virtual communication, academia impacts … Continue reading Currents 006: Jim Coan on Our Social Recession →
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In this Currents episode, Jim talks to John Robb about an article that describes the military-style tactics leading to the capture and burning of a police headquarters in Minneapolis: specialized units, weapons & tactics, and decentralized communications. How the violent use the non-violent. Also: the dangers of police militarization, police reform, the potential for cultural change post … Continue reading Currents 005: John Robb on Protest Tactics & Reforms →
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Zak Stein talks with Jim about existential risks of our education systems, revolutions, attention, educational tech, standards, 4 quadrants of systems, and much more… Zak Stein talks with Jim about the existential risk of oppressive & unjust education systems, the inefficiency of injustice, how Zak sees social justice, Rawls veil of ignorance, creating new types of people, … Continue reading EP60 Zak Stein on Educational Systems Collapse →
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Dr. Gregg Henriques talks to Jim about his unified theory of psychology; clinical vs scientific, postmodernism, justification theory, Gameb, shadow work, and much more… Dr. Gregg Henriques talks to Jim about the many facets of his unified theory of psychology — basic vs human psychology, the value of folk psych, the field of psychology compared to other academic fields, … Continue reading EP59 Gregg Henriques on Unifying Psychology →
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In this Currents episode, Jim talks to Michael Vassar about how he defines the passive-aggressive revolution & the ways it could manifest in the US, how the George Floyd protests impact the revolution, police bureaucracy vs bad actors, potential investigative & prosecution rights for private citizens, Trump’s church photo op, the pandemic economic response, Trump voter types, … Continue reading Currents 004: Michael Vassar on Passive-Aggressive Revolution →
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Jake Bornstein talks to Jim about Game A vs Gameb, exploration vs exploitation, uncertainty & clarity, leadership, decentralization, psycho-tech, and much more… Jake Bornstein talks to Jim about what he learned from his eclectic career, understanding value, competing with Game A, collapse-first vs construction-first approaches to systems change, how Talentism works with & impacts Game … Continue reading EP58 Jake Bornstein on Leadership & Clarity →
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In this Currents episode, Jim talks to Joe Norman about appropriately-sized community collaboration, family & local organization, government & market dysfunctions, cooperation-based sacrifice, bad actors & sociopaths, unique dynamics of local markets, localism as a complex ecosystem, emergence, the limits of diversification & trade, multi-scale localism, wicked societal risks, the politicization of masks, and more. Episode Transcript Joe’s Community … Continue reading Currents 003: Joe Norman on Localism & Scales of Cooperation →
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Zak Stein talks to Jim about, societal change, intergenerational transmission, the nature of education, teacherly authority, parenting, schooling, and much more… Zak Stein has a wide-ranging talk with Jim about our culture’s dwindling capacity to understand & address today’s increasingly complex problems. Zak starts by defining this moment as a time between worlds & draws … Continue reading EP57 Zak Stein on Education in a Time Between Worlds →
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Arthur Brock talks to Jim about Holochain — agent-centric design, key management, data integrity, validation, zomes, DNA, hApp’s, search, HOT token, and much more… Arthur Brock & Fernanda Ibarra talk to Jim about how Holochain works, its agent-centric design & how it’s different from Etherium and Blockchain, key management, intrinsic data integrity, decentralized validation, micro-service … Continue reading EP56 Art Brock on Holo Tech →
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In this Currents episode, Jim talks to Brian Hanley about his view on the economic impact & recovery of COVID-19, the dramatic social impacts emerging, his views & experience with vaccine creation, vaccine risks & effectiveness, his proposal for rolling out vaccines immediately, immunity dynamics, and more. Episode Transcript Brian Hanley is the founder and … Continue reading Currents 002: Brian Hanley on Releasing the Vaccines →
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Jack Murphy talks to Jim about The Liminal Order, attacks on masculinity, gender, post-modernism, impacts of social justice, racism, Trump, localism, and much more… Jack Murphy talks to Jim about his professional & political background, why he started The Liminal Order, his book, Democrat to Deplorable, the left’s attack on masculinity, Jack’s view on the manosphere & men’s … Continue reading EP55 Jack Murphy on Leaving the Left →
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Robert Conan Ryan talks with Jim about Neo Schumpeterianism: boom & bust cycles, 6 paradigms, organic vs digital, meaning-making, utopias, and much more… Robert Conan Ryan talks with Jim about Neo Schumpeterian economic theory, booms & busts dynamics, leverage cycles, golden ages, nuclear power propaganda & legislation, 5 paradigms of Neo Schumpeterianism & the emerging … Continue reading EP54 Robert Conan Ryan on Boom & Bust Cycles →
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In this inaugural Currents episode, Jim talks to Simon DeDeo about speech censorship at elite Anglosphere universities, differing generational perspectives on personal liberty, the coddled mind & postmodern neo-Marxist theories, Simon’s platonic cocktail party model, hospitality as a norm, College incentives, alternate metaphors for collective education, and more. Episode Transcript Simon on Twitter Jonathan Haidt … Continue reading Currents 001: Simon DeDeo on University Censorship →
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Hanzi Freinacht talks to Jim about his book, Nordic Ideology; code, depth, complexity, cultural changeability, attractor points, game change, protopia, and much more… Hanzi Freinacht, political philosopher, historian, sociologist, & author talks with Jim about effective value memes, cultural code, what it means to have high depth, dynamics of cognitive complexity, the changeability of culture … Continue reading EP53 Hanzi Freinacht on the Nordic Ideology →
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Jim talks to John Robb about Defeat Disinfo, memetic armies, emerging economic implications of COVID-19, wicked risks, the break up of US, and more… In this short extra episode, Jim talks to John Robb about the implication of Defeat Disinfo & how social platforms might respond, memetic armies & street fights, weak political responses to … Continue reading Extra: Memetic Warfare & Pandemic Responses with John Robb →
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Steven Levy talks with Jim about his new book, Facebook: The Inside Story. Which covers the people, circumstances & philosophies that define Facebook. Steven Levy has a wide-ranging conversation with Jim about his new book, Facebook: The Inside Story. They cover Steven’s multi-year access to Facebook & Mark Zuckerberg while researching the book, Facebook’s initial … Continue reading EP52 Steven Levy on Facebook: The Inside Story →
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Richard Bartlett talks to Jim about his experiences with decentralized work & organization, Gameb, group size dynamics, big change movements & much more… Richard Bartlett talks to Jim about his experiences with decentralized work & organization, transitioning from game a to Gameb, models for financial solidarity, technology-first vs psychology-first approaches to collaboration, dyad vs crew … Continue reading EP51 Richard Bartlett on Self-Organizing Collaboration →
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In this short extra episode, Jim talks to John Robb about network decision making & consensus vs dissent dynamics, COVID as a decision making test, herd immunity vs social distancing, key population dynamics, John’s big tech solution & its main roadblocks, reflections on UBI & stimulus, the value of simple solutions, the failed US political … Continue reading Extra: Key COVID-19 Decisions with John Robb →
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Joe Brewer talks to Jim about homeostasis in living systems, future collapse, fat-tail risks, evolutionary transitions, collaboration, bioregionalism, and much more… Joe Brewer talks to Jim about the memetics of regeneration & its connection to homeostasis in living systems, eco pessimism & Joe’s view of future collapse, foodchain fragility, fat-tail risks, the role of emotions … Continue reading EP50 Joe Brewer on Earth Regeneration →
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In this short extra episode, Jim talks to Nora Bateson about how the pandemic is changing our relationship to time & mortality, recontextualizing the essential, non-linear future speculation, opportunities & dangers, the fragility of efficiency, changing how we work & travel, our political priorities, prioritizing community, family, locality, health and more. Episode Transcript JRS: EP30 … Continue reading Extra: COVID-19 Transformations with Nora Bateson →
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In this short extra episode, Jim talks to Michelle Girvan about the network dynamics of COVID-19 spread, fat-tailed risks, unintuitive network insights, social distancing dynamics, efficiency vs robustness, challenges of modeling the backside of the curve, the need for testing, economic analysis, potential corporate roles, the Network Epidemiology Online Workshop Series, and more. Episode Transcript … Continue reading Extra: COVID-19 Network Epidemiology with Michelle Girvan →
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Laurence Gonzales talks to Jim about his book “Deep Survival” a look at survival in extreme conditions from a cognitive science & “you are there” POV, and more… Author Laurence Gonzales talks to Jim about his book “Deep Survival” a fascinating look at survival in extreme conditions from both a cognitive science and “you are … Continue reading EP49 Laurence Gonzales on Deep Survival →
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In this short extra episode, Jim talks to Jessica Flack about stressing & testing cultural organization styles, optimizing for wholistic robustness, acting-oriented sensemaking, a department of wicked risks, top-down vs bottom-up response dynamics, liminal spaces, speculative market safeguard techniques, long-term thinking, safety nets, inequality, and more. Episode Transcript JRS: EP48 Jessica Flack on Complex System … Continue reading Extra: On COVID-19 Opportunities with Jessica Flack →
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In this short extra episode, Jim talks to Robin Hanson about possible dosage related effects on exposure and the related trade-offs of viral dose & deliberate infection strategies, the need for more investment in robustness, capacity vs flexibility, optimizing for adaptability, our lack of leadership, and more. Episode Transcript JRS: EP2 Robin Hanson – Decision … Continue reading Extra: On COVID-19 Strategies with Robin Hanson →
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In this short extra episode, Jim talks to Simon DeDeo about what moving out of social isolation could be like, social norms for risk management, the wide diversity of COVID reactions, making sense personally & collectively, homeostasis & hysteresis, post-COVID impacts on data privacy, travel, free time, education, and more. Episode Transcript Simon’s post on … Continue reading Extra: On Post-COVID-19 Impact with Simon DeDeo →
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Jessica Flack talks to Jim about causality in complex systems, theoretical biology, emergence, agent-based modeling, social policing, & much more… Professor Jessica Flack talks to Jim about micro vs macro causality in complex systems, coarse-graining, primate power hierarchies, downward causation, robustness, free will as a feeling, consciousness theories, theoretical biology, laws in adaptive systems, the non-spookiness of … Continue reading EP48 Jessica Flack on Complex System Dynamics →
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In this short extra episode, Jim talks to Bonnitta Roy about what it means to ‘stay with the trouble’, habitual behavior, the value of reflection, consumerism, scarcity & abundance, resourcefulness, the allure of going back to the rat race, system dependence vs interconnection, lack of community in the capitalist system, Game B, the downsides & … Continue reading Extra: On COVID-19 Potentials with Bonnitta Roy →
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In this short extra episode, Jim talks to Dr. Ben Goertzel about the economic & cultural impacts we could expect after the peak of COVID-19, the end of the tech backlash, income inequality, homeostasis & hysteresis, business travel bets from Jim & Ben, in-person vs virtual events, potential opportunities, cryptocurrency & blockchain, answering the cultural … Continue reading Extra: On Post COVID-19 Impacts with Ben Goertzel →
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On this Bonus episode, Jim hosts a talk & Q&A on The Stoa. He reflects on the impacts & opportunities created by COVID-19, Game A vs Game B, complexity, & much more… In this bonus episode, Jim hosts a talk & Q&A on The Stoa. Peter Limberg sets the context for this talk and they then go on … Continue reading Bonus: Jim on The Stoa, COVID & Game B →
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In this short extra episode, Co-Founder & CEO of Everest Bob Reid talks with Jim about the core elements of an effective UBI, short vs long term UBI approaches for the US, the Everest platform’s UBI capabilities & implementation timelines, biometrics, fraud, security, feasibility, and more. Episode Transcript Everest.org Extra: On COVID-19 & Complexity with … Continue reading Extra: On COVID-19 & UBI with Bob Reid →
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In this short extra episode, Jim talks with Jordan Hall about the lessons we are learning with respect to complex system dynamic response capabilities including: our current sensemaking & limitations, distributed decision-making, finding warning signals in cultural noise, potential prevention & preparedness measures, bottom-up resilience, cultural change-management, exponential vs linear thinking, applying agile processes at … Continue reading Extra: On COVID-19 & Complexity with Jordan Hall →
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In this short extra episode Jim talks with John Robb about how prepared we were for a pandemic like this, manufacturing, the economic & health impacts, CA & NY trends, impacts of ignoring quarantine, what is needed for a societal recovery, the political response, UBI vs bailouts, and more. Episode Transcript John’s Global Guerrillas Report … Continue reading Extra: On COVID-19 with John Robb →
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Mark Burgess talks with Jim about money through the promise theory lense — banks, debt, interest, deflation, stockpiling, entropy, crypto, and much more… Author, founder & scientist Mark Burgess talks with Jim about promise theory, the many functions of money, its network transfer & physical components, spacetime’s connection to money’s ability to store value, the … Continue reading EP47 Mark Burgess on the Physics of Money →
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Daniel Schrag talks with Jim about global collective action, climate models & data collection, geoengineering, long-term thinking, our uncertain future, and much more… Professor Daniel Schrag talks with Jim about Geology’s connection to climate change, the dynamics & scope of abrupt climate changes, global collective action, the value & limits of climate models, thermal inertia … Continue reading EP46 Daniel Schrag on Climate Dynamics →
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Beth Pyles talks to Jim about why she left trial law to become a pastor, affluenza, spirituality & religion, peacemaking, foreign intervention, and much more… Beth Pyles talks to Jim about small community living, why she left trial law to become a pastor, the dynamics affluenza & the hedonistic treadmill, how she views meaning & … Continue reading EP45 Beth Pyles on Faith, Peace & Community →
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Steve LeVine talks with Jim about battery tech’s role in sustainable transportation, his writing process for The Powerhouse, EV predictions, and much more… Steve LeVine talks with Jim about why battery innovation is so important for sustainable transportation, the challenges & promises of transitioning to electric vehicles, how Steve researched & wrote his book (The … Continue reading EP44 Steve LeVine on EV Battery Tech →
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Daniel Christian Wahl talks with Jim about bioregional regeneration, Game B, complexity theory, epistemic modesty, questions vs answers, money, spirituality, and much more… Daniel Christian Wahl talks with Jim about catalysis, Game B, geo therapy vs geoengineering, the short-term perspective of fossil fuels & limited resources, viewing population projections in relation to climate impact, the … Continue reading EP43 Daniel Christian Wahl on a Regenerative Future →
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MIT professor & researcher Jessika Trancik talks with Jim about the dynamics & state of renewable energy tech & policies, decarbonization, carbon taxes, climate despair, and much more… MIT professor & researcher Jessika Trancik talks with Jim about energy return on investment (EROI), the power of learning curves, the feasibility of an all-electric society, base … Continue reading EP42 Jessika Trancik on Tech & Research vs Climate Change →
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Daniel Mezick talks with Jim about agile process & organizations, how agile scrums work, openspace tech, change management, leadership, authority, complex systems, and much more… Daniel Mezick talks with Jim about how he got into business consulting & agile processes, what an openspace organization is & how it scales with business size/type, Jim’s experience with … Continue reading EP41 Daniel Mezick on the Agile Organization →
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Eric Smith talks with Jim about geochemistry & the origins of life, monetary systems & dynamics, interdisciplinarity linguistics, sustainability, civil society, and much more… Multidimensional thinker Eric Smith has a wide-ranging talk with Jim about the origins of life, monetary systems, language & sustainability. Eric starts by sharing how geochemistry informs the origin of life … Continue reading EP40 Eric Smith on the Physics of Living Systems →
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Jim talks to the multi-talented thinker & creator John Koza about his secure lottery ticket tech, his genetic programming work, how & why he created the National Popular Vote bill, and much more… Multi-talented thinker & creator John Koza & Jim start by talking about what led him to create secure lottery ticket tech early … Continue reading EP39 John Koza on Bleeding Edges →
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Tristan Harris & Jim talk about his background in design ethics, dangers of ad targeting, game theory, time well spent, the global information war, trends to be optimistic about, and much more… Tristan Harris & Jim start by talking about how Tristan’s career & education in design ethics are informed by being a magician in his youth. … Continue reading EP38 Tristan Harris on Humane Tech →
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Jared Janes talks with Jim about spiritual language, altered states vs traits, suffering, the confabulated self, embodiment, concentration practices, metaphysics, and more… Meditator & thinker Jared Janes talks with Jim about why he still uses the word ‘spiritual’, altered states vs altered traits, the equation & dynamics of suffering, understanding our own intentions, the confabulating … Continue reading EP37 Jared Janes on Spirituality →
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Hanzi Freinacht talks with Jim about postmodernism, value memes, cognitive complexity, societal code, the promises/dangers of metamodernism, and much more… Hanzi Freinacht, political philosopher, historian, sociologist, & author has a wide-ranging talk with Jim that starts by exploring what postmodern views are, how many postmodernists there might be & how they act. They, then go … Continue reading EP36 Hanzi Freinacht on Metamodernism →
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Ken McCarthy talks with Jim about the commercial shift of the internet, the evolution of internet media, online market potential, the high cost of free, and much more… Internet pioneer Ken McCarthy talks with Jim about why & how he first got on the internet in 1993, what it was like to be in tech … Continue reading EP35 Ken McCarthy on the History of Online Business →
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Joe Edelman talks with Jim about values, social norms & ideological commitments, pluralism & coherence, ‘time well spent’, ethical advertising, and much more… Joe Edelman, philosopher, social scientist & designer starts this conversation with Jim by talking about how meaningfulness is connected to values, social norms & ideological commitments. Then, they go on to talk … Continue reading EP34 Joe Edelman on the Power of Values →
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Melanie Mitchell & Jim talk about the many approaches to creating AI, hype cycles, self-driving cars, what can be learned from human intelligence, and much more… Professor & Author Melanie Mitchell and Jim have a wide-ranging talk about her work in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI). They explore the differences between deep learning, symbolic … Continue reading EP33 Melanie Mitchell on the Elements of AI →
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Author & Professor Jason Brennan talks with Jim about teaching business school, libertarianism, poor incentives/outcomes in democracy & academia, and much more… Author & Research Professor Jason Brennan talks with Jim about teaching in business school after studying philosophy, what a bleeding heart libertarian is, the ignorance & irrationality of voters, how well group identity … Continue reading EP32 Jason Brennan on Irrational Democracy & Academia →
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The multi-talented Forrest Landry talks with Jim about what motivates him, ethics & metaphysics, meaning & sense-making, collective action, collapse, and much more… Forrest Landry, philosopher, writer, researcher, scientist, engineer, craftsman, and teacher talks with Jim about his company (Magic-Flight), what motivates his work, how he defines ethics, metaphysics & its connection to realism, free … Continue reading EP31 Forrest Landry on Building our Future →
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Nora Bateson talks with Jim about her recent book, her father & grandfather’s academic impact, thinking transcontextually, Game B, warm data labs, and much more… Nora Bateson, award-winning filmmaker, writer, educator, and President of the International Bateson Institute talks with Jim about the work of the International Bateson Institute, her father (Gregory Bateson) & grandfather’s … Continue reading EP30 Nora Bateson on Complexity & the Transcontextual →
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Michael Mauboussin talks with Jim about his latest book, SFI, investment, using variance & complexity, luck & skill, bias, IQ vs RQ, forecasting, and more… Michael Mauboussin, Director of Research at BlueMountain Capital Management, Author, and Adjunct Professor at Columbia University talks with Jim about how he came to be the Chairman of the Board … Continue reading EP29 Michael Mauboussin on The Success Equation →
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Author, founder & scientist Mark Burgess talks with Jim about his career, physics skill set, CFEngine, Promise Theory, AI, free will, spacetime, and much more… Author, founder & scientist Mark Burgess talks with Jim about why he made the switch from theoretical physics to computer science, the widely applicable skill set of physicists, what led … Continue reading EP28 Mark Burgess on Promise Theory, AI & Spacetime →
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Jamie Wheal talks to Jim about flow, intrinsic & extrinsic motivation, group flow, GameB, the future of ecstatic state tech, cult leaders, and much more… Author Jamie Wheal talks with Jim about working with the Navy SEALs, what characterizes flow, intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation, the Eleusinian Mysteries, Plato, Aristotle & Pythagoras, soft-leadership & dynamic hierarchies, … Continue reading EP27 Jamie Wheal on Flow & the Future of Culture →
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Jordan Hall & Jim outline Game B’s advantage over Game A, explore embodied wisdom, meaningfulness, Game B transitions & life, parasitizing Game A, and much more… Jordan Hall and Jim have another wide-ranging conversation about Game B. They start with a quick overview of Game A and then move on to talk about the emerging … Continue reading EP26 Jordan Hall on the Game B Emergence →
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Author & CEO Gary Marcus talks with Jim about his book, Rebooting AI, driverless cars, AI learning & intelligence, hybrid AI models & AI bias, and much more… Scientist, author & entrepreneur Gary Marcus talks with Jim about his latest book, Rebooting AI. In this wide-ranging conversation they cover the gullibility gap, the illusory progress … Continue reading EP25 Gary Marcus on Rebooting AI →
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Bret Weinstein & Jim talk about unsustainable culture, dangerous algorithms, GameB, complexity, trade-offs, social media, today’s left, Darwinian religion, and much more… Bret Weinstein and Jim talk about the evolutionary & game-theoretic dynamics that have led humanity to an unsustainable place, the impact of today’s algorithms & how they’re connected to human evolution, the recent … Continue reading EP24 Bret Weinstein on Evolving Culture →
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Jim talks with CEO Jeff Gomez about working on movies, games & media, transmedia storytelling, fandom, working with the US gov, propaganda, Game B, and much more… CEO Jeff Gomez and Jim have a wide-ranging talk about Jeff’s work with massive movies like Pirates of the Caribbean, his work with transmedia storytelling & worldbuilding, how … Continue reading EP23 Jeff Gomez on Narrative & Cultural Change →
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Consultant Sara Kindsfater-Yerkes & Jim talk about leadership today, HR teams, embracing change, team engagement, honesty, gender dynamics, being offended, and much more… Business Consultant Sara Kindsfater-Yerkes and Jim start this episode by reflecting on working together in their earlier careers. They then go on to talk about today’s multi-generational workforce, commonalities of Gen Z … Continue reading EP22 Sara Kindsfater-Yerkes on the Evolution of Business →
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AI expert Roman Yampolskiy & Jim have a wide-ranging talk about simulation theory, types of intelligence, AI research & safety, the singularity, and much more… This conversation with Jim and Dr. Roman V. Yampolskiy–author, tenured associate professor, founding director of Cyber Security Lab–starts by covering the vast variance of possible minds. They then go on … Continue reading EP21 Roman Yampolskiy on the Outer Limits of AI →
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Author Pamela McCorduck talks to Jim about her new book, the humanities & sciences divide, her friendships with AI pioneers, risks of AI, feminism, and more… Author Pamela McCorduck talks with Jim about themes of her latest book, This Could Be Important: My Life and Times with the Artificial Intelligentsia. They talk about C.P. Snow’s … Continue reading EP20 Pamela McCorduck on Her Life & Times with AI →
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Author, inventor, tech analyst, engineer, and military pilot John Robb talks to Jim about drone attacks, internet-age networks, geopolitics, AGI, and much more… This conversation with Jim and John Robb–author, inventor, entrepreneur, technology analyst, astro engineer, and military pilot–starts by covering the impact of the recent drone attack on a Saudi fuel processing center, and … Continue reading EP19 John Robb on Asymmetric & Networked Conflict & Strategy →
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Professor, MacArthur Fellow & author Stuart Kauffman talks with Jim about complexity, biology & the origins of life, social/technical evolution, and much more… Professor, MacArthur Fellow and author Stuart Kauffman talks with Jim about the major themes of his career: complexity, auto-catalytic chemical sets, protocells and the origins of life, the problem of the error … Continue reading EP18 Stuart Kauffman on Complexity, Biology & T.A.P. →
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Bonnitta Roy teaches insight practices for individuals who are developing meta-cognitive skills, and hosts collective insight retreats for groups interested in breaking away from limiting patterns of thought. She teaches a masters course in consciousness studies and transpersonal psychology at the Graduate Institute. Her teaching highlights the embodied, affective and perceptual aspects of the core … Continue reading EP17 – Bonnitta Roy on Process Thinking and Complexity →
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Peter Wang is Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder of Anaconda, the leading Python tools and data analytics company. Peter holds a B.A. in Physics from Cornell University and has been developing applications professionally using Python since 2001. Before co-founding Anaconda (formerly Continuum Analytics) in 2011, Peter spent seven years designing and developing applications for a … Continue reading EP16 Anaconda CTO Peter Wang on The Distributed Internet →
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David Brin is best-known for shining light — plausibly and entertainingly — on technology, society, and countless challenges confronting our rambunctious civilization. His bestselling novels include The Postman (filmed in 1997) plus explorations of our near-future in Earth and Existence. Other novels are translated into over 25 languages. His short stories explore vividly speculative ideas. Brin’s nonfiction book The … Continue reading EP15 Futurist David Brin on The Case for Optimism →
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Jill Tarter received her Bachelor of Engineering Physics Degree with Distinction from Cornell University and her Master’s Degree and a Ph.D. in Astronomy from the University of California, Berkeley. She served as Project Scientist for NASA’s SETI program, the High Resolution Microwave Survey, and has conducted numerous observational programs at radio observatories worldwide. Since the … Continue reading EP14 Astrophysicist Jill Tarter on SETI and Technosignatures →
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Trent McConaghy is the Founder of Ocean Protocol. He has 20 years of deep technology experience with a focus on machine learning, data visualization and user experience. He was a researcher at the Canadian Department of Defense and in 1999, he co-founded Analog Design Automation Inc. and was its CTO until its acquisition by Synopsys Inc. … Continue reading EP13 Trent McConaghy: Blockchain, AI and DAOs →
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Brian Nosek is Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Center for Open Science (COS) that operates the Open Science Framework. COS is enabling open and reproducible research practices worldwide. Brian is also a Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Virginia. He received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 2002. Brian co-founded … Continue reading EP12 Brian Nosek – Open Science and Reproducibility →
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Dave Snowden is Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Cognitive Edge. His work is international in nature and covers government and industry looking at complex issues relating to strategy and organizational decision-making. He has pioneered a science-based approach to organizations drawing on anthropology, neuroscience, and complex adaptive systems theory. He is a popular and passionate … Continue reading EP11 Dave Snowden and Systems Thinking →
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David Krakauer is President and William H. Miller Professor of Complex Systems at the Santa Fe Institute. David’s research focuses on the evolutionary history of information processing mechanisms in biology and culture. This includes genetic, neural, linguistic and cultural mechanisms. The research spans multiple levels of organization, seeking analogous patterns and principles in genetics, cell … Continue reading EP10 David Krakauer: Complexity Science →
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Joe Norman is an applied complexity scientist with a focus on transforming insights gleaned from complex systems science into practical and implementable strategies and tactics for grappling with an increasingly uncertain and dynamic world. Joe is an Affilate at the New England Complex Systems Institute in Cambridge, MA, an instructor at the Real World Risk … Continue reading EP9 Joe Norman: Applied Complexity →
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Zachary Vorhies recently resigned as a senior software engineer at YouTube. Employed by Google since 2008, Vorhies collected a large cache of documents that he claims demonstrates that Google intentionally skews search results to drive a political agenda. Vorhies shared these documents with James O’Keefe of Project Veritas, which released a video about the documents … Continue reading Special Episode: Zachary Vorhies →
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Jordan is the Co-founder and Executive Chairman of the Neurohacker Collective. He is now in his 17th year of building disruptive technology companies. Jordan’s interests in comics, science fiction, computers, and way too much TV led to a deep dive into contemporary philosophy (particularly the works of Gilles Deleuze and Manuel DeLanda), artificial intelligence and … Continue reading EP8 Jordan “Greenhall” Hall and Game B →
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Daniel Schmachtenberger is a founding member of The Consilience Project, aimed at improving public sensemaking and dialogue. The throughline of his interests has to do with ways of improving the health and development of individuals and society, with a virtuous relationship between the two as a goal. Towards these ends, he’s had particular interest in … Continue reading EP7 Daniel Schmachtenberger and the Evolution of Technology →
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Douglas Rushkoff is the host of the Team Human podcast and author of Team Human as well as a dozen other bestselling books on media, technology, and culture, including, Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity, Present Shock, Program or Be Programmed, Media Virus, and the novel Ecstasy Club. … Continue reading EP 6 Douglas Rushkoff – Memetics, Money + TeamHuman →
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Lee Smolin is a theoretical physicist who has been since 2001 a founding and senior faculty member at Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. His main contributions have been so far to the quantum theory of gravity, to which he has been a co-inventor and major contributor to two major directions, loop quantum gravity and deformed … Continue reading EP5 Lee Smolin – Quantum Foundations and Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution →
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Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist, journalist, blogger, and co-editor of Boing Boing. He is the author of Radicalized and Walkaway, science fiction for adults; a young adult graphic novel called In Real Life; the nonfiction business book Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free, and more. Cory works for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, … Continue reading EP4 Cory Doctorow – “Radicalized,” Race and Resilience →
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Dr. Ben Goertzel is Chief Scientist of robotics firm Hanson Robotics and financial prediction firm Aidyia Holdings; Chairman of AI software company Novamente LLC and bioinformatics company Biomind LLC; Chairman of the Artificial General Intelligence Society and the OpenCog Foundation; Vice Chairman of futurist nonprofit Humanity+; Scientific Advisor of biopharma firm Genescient Corp.; Advisor to … Continue reading EP3 Dr. Ben Goertzel – OpenCog, AGI and SingularityNET →
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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. Index to The Jim Rutt Show featuring … Continue reading EP2 Robin Hanson – Decision Making and “The Age of Em” →
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Simon DeDeo is an Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University in the Department of Social and Decision Sciences, and External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. He is also affiliated with the Cognitive Science program at Indiana University, where he runs the Laboratory for Social Minds. For three years, from 2010 to 2013, he was … Continue reading EP1 Simon DeDeo – The Evolution of Consciousness →
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