Theo Jaffee Podcast Theo Jaffee

Robin Hanson is a professor of economics at George Mason University, the author of The Age of Em and The Elephant in the Brain, the writer of the blog Overcoming Bias, and one of the most interesting polymaths alive today.



0:00 - Intro

1:24 - Mathematical models and grabby aliens

9:11 - Will we run out of value in the future?12:23 - Kurzweil’s Law of Accelerating Returns

14:29 - Posadism

17:53 - Moral progress and Whig history

20:29 - Will there be a trad resurgence?

23:00 - Will Israel’s ultra-Orthodox problem globalize?

25:39 - Why will fertility rate keep dropping?

30:14 - Is declining fertility solvable technologically?

32:20 - What is wokeness? Has it peaked?

35:02 - Will virtualization make society more multicultural?

39:30 - How do institutions coordinate so well?

42:50 - Will ems care about death?

46:16 - Personal identity and death

49:30 - How much of Age of Em is applicable to LLMs?

51:09 - Why we shouldn’t worry about AI risk

55:40 - What if people don’t see AIs as their descendants?

1:00:41 - Other future tech deep dives

1:02:43 - Our very long-run descendants

1:06:08 - Time and risk preferences

1:08:34 - Wouldn’t ems be selected for docility?

1:11:24 - How Robin got involved in rationalism

1:13:22 - Girls getting the “ick”

1:16:56 - Have humans evolved since forager times?

1:18:28 - Cultural evolution

1:20:30 - Culture and prestige

1:22:49 - Why medicine in the US is bad

1:25:54 - Is academia the best truth-seeking institution in society?

1:28:52 - Peer review

1:31:13 - Which institutions are actually good?

1:32:33 - Why universities are all the same

1:37:40 - Bitcoin and speculation

1:46:44 - Demarchy

1:50:03 - Futarchy

1:53:56 - Applying prediction markets to dating apps

1:57:38 - The broadest thinkers and books in the world

2:00:59 - How Robin balances his many interests

2:01:58 - Teaching

2:03:12 - Outro



Robin’s Homepage: https://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/home.html

Overcoming Bias: https://www.overcomingbias.com/

Robin’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/robinhansonGrabby Aliens: https://grabbyaliens.com/

Age of Em: https://archive.is/LMrr9The Elephant in the Brain: https://www.elephantinthebrain.com/

Beware Cultural Drift: https://quillette.com/2024/04/11/beware-cultural-drift/

More Episodes

Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdJRQ6924HY&list=PLVN8-zhbMh9YnOGVRT9m0xzqTNGD_sujj

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1IJRtB8FP4Cnq8lWuuCdvW?si=b4001cf2e8a5453f

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/theo-jaffee-podcast/id1699912677

My Twitter: https://x.com/theojaffee

My Substack: https://www.theojaffee.com

Nick Simmons is a founding partner at Octu Ventures, a member-driven venture DAO investing in teams building on Urbit. Urbit is a new computing paradigm that provides complete ownership of your digital world.

0:00 - Intro

1:19 - What actually is Urbit?

5:43 - Urbit ID and Schelling points

9:05 - Why Urbit?

10:23 - Roko Mijic on Urbit vs. TikTok and Crypto

17:32 - Urbit vs. Worldcoin

22:26 - Niche or growth model?

28:50 - Why haven’t Urbit star prices recovered since 2021?

33:13 - Intrinsic value of Urbit address space

36:37 - Urbit as digital land

42:51 - Urbit and DeFi

45:42 - Personal AI on Urbit

51:35 - Urbit-native hardware

55:58 - Urbit design and aesthetics

1:02:15 - Outro

Urbit: https://urbit.org/

Octu: https://octu.ventures/

Urbit Blog: https://urbit.org/blog

“Creating Sigils”: https://urbit.org/blog/creating-sigils

“On Christopher Alexander”: https://urbit.org/blog/on-christopher-alexander

Nick’s Twitter: https://x.com/Halikaarn1an

More Episodes

Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdJRQ6924HY&list=PLVN8-zhbMh9YnOGVRT9m0xzqTNGD_sujj

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1IJRtB8FP4Cnq8lWuuCdvW?si=b4001cf2e8a5453f

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/theo-jaffee-podcast/id1699912677

My Twitter: https://x.com/theojaffeeMy Substack: https://www.theojaffee.com/

Paul Buchheit is a programmer and entrepreneur who joined Google as its 23rd employee. He created Gmail, developed the first prototype of Google AdSense, and suggested the company’s motto, “don’t be evil”. He later co-founded FriendFeed and served as a managing partner at Y Combinator.

0:00 - Intro

1:15 - Issues with Google

3:47 - AI risk

5:21 - AI centralization and decentralization

8:01 - Open-sourcing frontier AI

9:59 - Paul’s Predictions

14:28 - Centralization, free speech, and censorship

24:16 - Trends in ideology

32:00 - Freeing people of narratives

35:49 - Alignment

39:06 - Startups and YC in 2024

50:30 - Email and communication interfaces

Paul’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/paultoo

Paul’s Blog: https://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/

More Episodes

Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdJRQ6924HY&list=PLVN8-zhbMh9YnOGVRT9m0xzqTNGD_sujj

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1IJRtB8FP4Cnq8lWuuCdvW?si=b4001cf2e8a5453f

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/theo-jaffee-podcast/id1699912677

My Twitter: https://twitter.com/theojaffee

My Substack: https://www.theojaffee.com/

Bryan Caplan is a professor of economics at George Mason University, research fellow at the Mercatus Center, adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, writer at EconLib and Bet On It, and best-selling author of eight books, including You Will Not Stampede Me: Essays on Non-Conformism, the subject of this episode.



0:00 - Intro

2:04 - The Next Crusade

3:44 - Moderating X

6:11 - Inventing Slippery Slopes

8:04 - Right-Wing Antiwokes

10:20 - Nonconformism and Asperger’s

12:02 - Making society less conformist

16:44 - The rationality community

20:30 - Polyamory

23:28 - Caplan vs. Yudkowsky on methods of rationality

26:40 - Updating on AI risk

29:35 - Checking your nonconformity

31:10 - Making LinkedIn not suck

33:53 - The George Mason economics department

38:35 - Does tenure still matter?

40:03 - Improving education

46:50 - Should people living under totalitarianism conform?

49:30 - Natalism and birth rates in Israel

51:19 - Hedonic adaptation in the age of AI

53:52 - Should we abolish the FDA?

57:15 - Being a prolific writer

1:00:30 - Bryan’s writing advice

1:02:35 - Outro



Bryan’s Twitter: https://x.com/bryan_caplan

Bryan’s Blog, Bet On It: https://www.betonit.ai/

Buy You Will Not Stampede Me: https://www.amazon.com/You-Will-Not-Stampede-Non-Conformism/dp/B0CQPJ6DCT/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.95bGnREBhOREb8kL8JeVpjT4w1MPCEfRYcUNZuMAEHVdVGJYv9Ns80cVoAGLtZJPOA6b5DTvnMfO6tF6ZAfRybM2TL7EtaHQlsvbOZVOZro.EzrhsuVDhljbtjiqE_YqD9_RP0YXHFyVHMYEu9GOviI&qid=1708877990&sr=8-1

More Episodes

Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdJRQ6924HY&list=PLVN8-zhbMh9YnOGVRT9m0xzqTNGD_sujj

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1IJRtB8FP4Cnq8lWuuCdvW?si=b4001cf2e8a5453f

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/theo-jaffee-podcast/id1699912677

My Twitter: https://twitter.com/theojaffee

My Substack: https://www.theojaffee.com/

Liron Shapira is an entrepreneur, angel investor, and CEO of counseling startup Relationship Hero. He’s also a rationalist, advisor for the Machine Intelligence Research Institute and Center for Applied Rationality, and a consistently candid AI doom pointer-outer.


Liron’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/liron


Liron’s Substack: https://lironshapira.substack.com/


Liron’s old blog, Bloated MVP: https://www.bloatedmvp.com



TJP LINKS:


TRANSCRIPT: https://www.theojaffee.com/p/10-liron-shapira


YouTube: https://youtu.be/YfEcAtHExFM




Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/theo-jaffee-podcast/id1699912677


RSS: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/989123/s/75569/private/129f6344-c459-4581-a9da-dc331677c2f6.rss


Playlist of all episodes: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVN8-zhbMh9YnOGVRT9m0xzqTNGD_sujj


My Twitter: https://x.com/theojaffee


My Substack: https://www.theojaffee.com



CHAPTERS:


Intro (0:00)


Non-AI x-risks (0:53)


AI non-x-risks (3:00)


p(doom) (5:21)


Liron vs. Eliezer (12:18)


Why might doom not happen? (15:42)


Elon Musk and AGI (17:12)


Alignment vs. Governance (20:24)


Scott Alexander lowering p(doom) (22:32)


Human minds vs ASI minds (28:01)


Vitalik Buterin and d/acc (33:30)


Carefully bootstrapped alignment (35:22)


GPT vs AlphaZero (41:55)


Belrose & Pope AI Optimism (43:17)


AI doom meets daily life (57:57)


Israel vs. Hamas (1:02:17)


Rationalism (1:06:15)


Crypto (1:14:50)


Charlie Munger and Richard Feynman (1:22:12)

Dwarkesh Patel is the host of the Dwarkesh Podcast, where he interviews intellectuals, scientists, historians, economists, and founders about their big ideas. He does deep research and asks great questions. Past podcast guests include billionaire entrepreneur and investor Marc Andreessen, economist and polymath Tyler Cowen, and OpenAI Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever. Dwarkesh has been recommended by Jeff Bezos, Paul Graham, and me.


Dwarkesh Podcast (and transcripts): https://www.dwarkeshpatel.com/podcast


Dwarkesh Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DwarkeshPatel


Dwarkesh Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4JH4tybY1zX6e5hjCwU6gF


Dwarkesh Podcast on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dwarkesh-podcast/id1516093381


Dwarkesh’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dwarkesh_sp


Dwarkesh’s Blog: https://www.dwarkeshpatel.com/s/writing



PODCAST LINKS:


Video Transcript: https://www.theojaffee.com/p/9-dwarkesh-patel


Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1IJRtB8FP4Cnq8lWuuCdvW?si=eba62a72e6234efb


Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/theo-jaffee-podcast/id1699912677


RSS: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/989123/s/75569/private/129f6344-c459-4581-a9da-dc331677c2f6.rss


Playlist of all episodes: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVN8-zhbMh9YnOGVRT9m0xzqTNGD_sujj


My Twitter: https://x.com/theojaffee


My Substack: https://www.theojaffee.com



CHAPTERS:

Intro (0:00)

OpenAI drama (0:50)

Learning methods (4:10)

Growing the podcast (7:38)

Improving the podcast (17:03)

Contra Marc Andreessen on AI risk (24:18)

How will AI affect podcasts? (26:31)

AI alignment (32:08)

Dwarkesh’s guests (38:04)

Is Eliezer Yudkowsky right? (41:58)

More on the Dwarkesh Podcast (46:01)

Other great podcasts (50:06)

Nanobots, foom, and doom (56:01)

Great Twitter poasters (1:01:59)

Rationalism and other factions (1:05:44)

Why hasn’t Marxism died? (1:15:27)

Where to allocate talent (1:18:51)

Sam Bankman-Fried (1:22:22)

Why is Elon Musk so successful? (1:29:07)

How relevant is human talent with AGI soon? (1:35:07)

Is government actually broken? (1:36:35)

How should we fix Congress? (1:40:50)

Dwarkesh’s favorite part of podcasting (1:46:46)