Dwarkesh Podcast
Deeply researched interviews www.dwarkesh.com
Thu, April 17, 2025
AGI is Still 30 Years Away — Ege Erdil & Tamay Besiroglu
Ege Erdil and Tamay Besiroglu have 2045+ timelines, think the whole "alignment" framing is wrong, don't think an intelligence explosion is plausible, but are convinced we'll see explosive economic growth (economy literally doubling every year or two). This discussion offers a totally different scenario than my recent interview with Scott and Daniel . Ege and Tamay are the co-founders of Mechanize , a startup dedicated to fully automating work. Before founding Mechanize, Ege and Tamay worked on AI forecasts at Epoch AI . Watch on Youtube ; listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify . ---------- Sponsors * WorkOS makes it easy to become enterprise-ready. With simple APIs for essential enterprise features like SSO and SCIM, WorkOS helps companies like Vercel, Plaid, and OpenAI meet the requirements of their biggest customers. To learn more about how they can help you do the same, visit workos.com * Scale’s Data Foundry gives major AI labs access to high-quality data to fuel post-training, including advanced reasoning capabilities. If you’re an AI researcher or engineer, learn about how Scale’s Data Foundry and research lab, SEAL, can help you go beyond the current frontier at scale.com/dwarkesh * Google's Gemini Pro 2.5 is the model we use the most at Dwarkesh Podcast: it helps us generate transcripts , identify interesting clips , and code up new tools. If you want to try it for yourself, it's now available in Preview with higher rate limits! Start building with it today at aistudio.google.com . ---------- Timestamps (00:00:00) - AGI will take another 3 decades (00:22:27) - Even reasoning models lack animal intelligence (00:45:04) - Intelligence explosion (01:00:57) - Ege & Tamay’s story (01:06:24) - Explosive economic growth (01:33:00) - Will there be a separate AI e
Thu, April 03, 2025
2027 Intelligence Explosion: Month-by-Month Model — Scott Alexander & Daniel Kokotajlo
Scott and Daniel break down every month from now until the 2027 intelligence explosion. Scott Alexander is author of the highly influential blogs Slate Star Codex and Astral Codex Ten . Daniel Kokotajlo resigned from OpenAI in 2024, rejecting a non-disparagement clause and risking millions in equity to speak out about AI safety. We discuss misaligned hive minds, Xi and Trump waking up, and automated Ilyas researching AI progress. I came in skeptical, but I learned a tremendous amount by bouncing my objections off of them. I highly recommend checking out their new scenario planning document, AI 2027 Watch on Youtube ; listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify . ---------- Sponsors * WorkOS helps today’s top AI companies get enterprise-ready. OpenAI, Cursor, Perplexity, Anthropic and hundreds more use WorkOS to quickly integrate features required by enterprise buyers. To learn more about how you can make the leap to enterprise, visit workos.com * Jane Street likes to know what's going on inside the neural nets they use. They just released a black-box challenge for Dwarkesh listeners, and I had a blast trying it out. See if you have the skills to crack it at janestreet.com/dwarkesh * Scale’s Data Foundry gives major AI labs access to high-quality data to fuel post-training, including advanced reasoning capabilities. If you’re an AI researcher or engineer, learn about how Scale’s Data Foundry and research lab, SEAL, can help you go beyond the current frontier at scale.com/dwarkesh To sponsor a future episode, visit dwarkesh.com/advertise . ---------- Timestamps (00:00:00) - AI 2027 (00:06:56) - Forecasting 2025 and 2026 (00:14:41) - Why LLMs aren't making discoveries (00:24:33) - Debating intelligence explosion (00:49:45) - Can superintelligence actually transform science? (01:16:54) - Cultural evolution vs superintelligence (01:24:05) - Mid-2027 branch point
Tue, March 25, 2025
AMA ft. Sholto & Trenton: New Book, Career Advice Given AGI, How I'd Start From Scratch
I recorded an AMA! I had a blast chatting with my friends Trenton Bricken and Sholto Douglas. We discussed my new book, career advice given AGI, how I pick guests, how I research for the show, and some other nonsense. My book, “ The Scaling Era: An Oral History of AI, 2019-2025 ” is available in digital format now. Preorders for the print version are also open! Watch on YouTube ; listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify . Timestamps (0:00:00) - Book launch announcement (0:04:57) - AI models not making connections across fields (0:10:52) - Career advice given AGI (0:15:20) - Guest selection criteria (0:17:19) - Choosing to pursue the podcast long-term (0:25:12) - Reading habits (0:31:10) - Beard deepdive (0:33:02) - Who is best suited for running an AI lab? (0:35:16) - Preparing for fast AGI timelines (0:40:50) - Growing the podcast Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Wed, March 12, 2025
Joseph Henrich – Why Humans Survived and Smarter Species Didn't
Humans have not succeeded because of our raw intelligence. Marooned European explorers regularly starved to death in areas where foragers thrived for 1000s of years. I’ve always found this cultural evolution deeply mysterious. How do you discover the 10 steps for processing cassava so it won’t give you cyanide poisoning simply by trial and error? Has the human brain declined in size over the last 10,000 years because we outsourced cultural evolution to a larger collective brain? The most interesting part of the podcast is Henrich’s explanation of how the Catholic Church unintentionally instigated the Industrial Revolution through the dismantling of intensive kinship systems in medieval Europe. Watch on Youtube ; listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify . ---------- Sponsors Scale partners with major AI labs like Meta, Google Deepmind, and OpenAI. Through Scale’s Data Foundry, labs get access to high-quality data to fuel post-training, including advanced reasoning capabilities. If you’re an AI researcher or engineer, learn about how Scale’s Data Foundry and research lab, SEAL, can help you go beyond the current frontier at scale.com/dwarkesh . To sponsor a future episode, visit dwarkesh.com/p/advertise . ---------- Joseph’s books The WEIRDest People in the World The Secret of Our Success ---------- Timestamps (0:00:00) - Humans didn’t succeed because of raw IQ (0:09:27) - How cultural evolution works (0:20:48) - Why is human brain size declining? (0:32:00) - Will AGI have superhuman cultural learning? (0:42:34) - Why Industrial Revolution happened in Europe (0:55:30) - Why China, Rome, India got left behind (1:21:09) - Loss of cultural variance in modern world (1:31:20) - Is individual genius real? (1:43:49) - IQ and collective brains Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Wed, March 05, 2025
Notes on China
I’m so excited with how this visualization of Notes on China turned out. Petr , thank you for such beautiful watercolor artwork. More to come! Watch on YouTube . ---------- Timestamps (0:00:00) - Intro (0:00:32) - Scale (0:05:50) - Vibes (0:11:14) - Youngsters (0:14:27) - Tech & AI (0:15:47) - Hearts & Minds (0:17:07) - On Travel Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Wed, February 19, 2025
Satya Nadella – Microsoft’s AGI Plan & Quantum Breakthrough
Satya Nadella on: Why he doesn’t believe in AGI but does believe in 10% economic growth; Microsoft’s new topological qubit breakthrough and gaming world models; Whether Office commoditizes LLMs or the other way around. Watch on Youtube ; listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify . ---------- Sponsors Scale partners with major AI labs like Meta, Google Deepmind, and OpenAI. Through Scale’s Data Foundry, labs get access to high-quality data to fuel post-training, including advanced reasoning capabilities. If you’re an AI researcher or engineer, learn about how Scale’s Data Foundry and research lab, SEAL, can help you go beyond the current frontier at scale.com/dwarkesh Linear's project management tools have become the default choice for product teams at companies like Ramp, CashApp, OpenAI, and Scale. These teams use Linear so they can stay close to their products and move fast. If you’re curious why so many companies are making the switch, visit linear.app/dwarkesh To sponsor a future episode, visit dwarkeshpatel.com/p/advertise . ---------- Timestamps (0:00:00) - Intro (0:05:04) - AI won't be winner-take-all (0:15:18) - World economy growing by 10% (0:21:39) - Decreasing price of intelligence (0:30:19) - Quantum breakthrough (0:42:51) - How Muse will change gaming (0:49:51) - Legal barriers to AI (0:55:46) - Getting AGI safety right (1:04:59) - 34 years at Microsoft (1:10:46) - Does Satya Nadella believe in AGI? Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Wed, February 12, 2025
Jeff Dean & Noam Shazeer – 25 years at Google: from PageRank to AGI
This week I welcome on the show two of the most important technologists ever, in any field. Jeff Dean is Google's Chief Scientist, and through 25 years at the company, has worked on basically the most transformative systems in modern computing: from MapReduce, BigTable, Tensorflow, AlphaChip, to Gemini. Noam Shazeer invented or co-invented all the main architectures and techniques that are used for modern LLMs: from the Transformer itself, to Mixture of Experts, to Mesh Tensorflow, to Gemini and many other things. We talk about their 25 years at Google, going from PageRank to MapReduce to the Transformer to MoEs to AlphaChip – and maybe soon to ASI. My favorite part was Jeff's vision for Pathways, Google’s grand plan for a mutually-reinforcing loop of hardware and algorithmic design and for going past autoregression. That culminates in us imagining *all* of Google-the-company, going through one huge MoE model. And Noam just bites every bullet: 100x world GDP soon; let’s get a million automated researchers running in the Google datacenter; living to see the year 3000.Watch on Youtube ; listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify . Sponsors Scale partners with major AI labs like Meta, Google Deepmind, and OpenAI. Through Scale’s Data Foundry, labs get access to high-quality data to fuel post-training, including advanced reasoning capabilities. If you’re an AI researcher or engineer, learn about how Scale’s Data Foundry and research lab, SEAL, can help you go beyond the current frontier at scale.com/dwarkesh Curious how Jane Street teaches their new traders? They use Figgie, a rapid-fire card game that simulates the most exciting parts of markets and trading. It’s become so popular that Jane Street hosts an inter-office Figgie championship every year. Download from the app store or play on your desktop at figgie.com Meter wants to radically improve the digital world we take for granted. They’re developing a foundation model that automates network management end-to-end. To do this, they just announced a long-term partnership with Microsoft for tens of thousands of GPUs, and they’re recruiting a world class AI research team. To learn more, go to meter.com/dwarkesh To sponsor a future episode, visit dwarkeshpatel.com/p/advertise Timestamps 00:00:00 - Intro 00:02:44 - Joining Google in 1999 00:05:36 - Future of Moore's Law</
Thu, January 30, 2025
Sarah Paine Episode 3: How Mao Conquered China
Third and final episode in the Paine trilogy! Chinese history is full of warlords constantly challenging the capital. How could Mao not only stay in power for decades, but not even face any insurgency? And how did Mao go from military genius to peacetime disaster - the patriotic hero who inflicted history’s worst human catastrophe on China? How can someone shrewd enough to win a civil war outnumbered 5 to 1 decide "let's have peasants make iron in their backyards" and "let's kill all the birds"? In her lecture and our Q&A, we cover the first nationwide famine in Chinese history; Mao's lasting influence on other insurgents; broken promises to minorities and peasantry; and what Taiwan means. Thanks so much to @Substack for running this in-person event! Note that Sarah is doing an AMA over the next couple days on Youtube ; see the pinned comment. Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Sponsor Today’s episode is brought to you by Scale AI. Scale partners with the U.S. government to fuel America’s AI advantage through their data foundry. Scale recently introduced Defense Llama, Scale's latest solution available for military personnel. With Defense Llama, military personnel can harness the power of AI to plan military or intelligence operations and understand adversary vulnerabilities. If you’re interested in learning more on how Scale powers frontier AI capabilities, go to https://scale.com/dwarkesh . Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Thu, January 23, 2025
Sarah Paine Episode 2: Why Japan Lost (Lecture & Interview)
This is the second episode in the trilogy of a lectures by Professor Sarah Paine of the Naval War College. In this second episode, Prof Paine dissects the ideas and economics behind Japanese imperialism before and during WWII. We get into the oil shortage which caused the war; the unique culture of honor and death; the surprisingly chaotic chain of command. This is followed by a Q&A with me. Huge thanks to Substack for hosting this event! Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Sponsor Today’s episode is brought to you by Scale AI. Scale partners with the U.S. government to fuel America’s AI advantage through their data foundry. Scale recently introduced Defense Llama, Scale's latest solution available for military personnel. With Defense Llama, military personnel can harness the power of AI to plan military or intelligence operations and understand adversary vulnerabilities. If you’re interested in learning more on how Scale powers frontier AI capabilities, go to scale.com/dwarkesh . Buy Sarah's Books! I highly, highly recommend both " The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949 " and " The Japanese Empire: Grand Strategy from the Meiji Restoration to the Pacific War ". Timestamps (0:00:00) - Lecture begins (0:06:58) - The code of the samurai (0:10:45) - Buddhism, Shinto, Confucianism (0:16:52) - Bushido as bad strategy (0:23:34) - Military theorists (0:33:42) - Strategic sins of omission (0:38:10) - Crippled logistics (0:40:58) - the Kwantung Army (0:43:31) - Inter-service communication (0:51:15) - Shattering Japanese morale (0:57:35) - Q&A begins (01:05:02) - Unusual brutality of WWII (01:11:30) - Embargo caused the war (01:16:48) - The liberation of China (01:22:02) - Could US have prevented war? (01:25:30) - Counterfactuals in history (01:27:46) - Japanese optimism (01:30:46) - Tech change and social change (01:38:22) - Hamming questions (01:44:31) - Do sanctions work? (01:50:07) - Backloaded mass death (01:54:09) - demilitarizing Japan (01:57:30) - Post-war alliances (02:03:46) - Inter-service rivalry Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarke
Thu, January 16, 2025
Sarah Paine Episode 1: The War For India (Lecture & Interview)
I’m thrilled to launch a new trilogy of double episodes: a lecture series by Professor Sarah Paine of the Naval War College, each followed by a deep Q&A. In this first episode, Prof Paine talks about key decisions by Khrushchev, Mao, Nehru, Bhutto, & Lyndon Johnson that shaped the whole dynamic of South Asia today. This is followed by a Q&A. Come for the spy bases, shoestring nukes, and insight about how great power politics impacts every region. Huge thanks to Substack for hosting this! Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Sponsors Today’s episode is brought to you by Scale AI. Scale partners with the U.S. government to fuel America’s AI advantage through their data foundry. The Air Force, Army, Defense Innovation Unit, and Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office all trust Scale to equip their teams with AI-ready data and the technology to build powerful applications. Scale recently introduced Defense Llama, Scale's latest solution available for military personnel. With Defense Llama, military personnel can harness the power of AI to plan military or intelligence operations and understand adversary vulnerabilities. If you’re interested in learning more on how Scale powers frontier AI capabilities, go to scale.com/dwarkesh . Timestamps (00:00) - Intro (02:11) - Mao at war, 1949-51 (05:40) - Pactomania and Sino-Soviet conflicts (14:42) - The Sino-Indian War (20:00) - Soviet peace in India-Pakistan (22:00) - US Aid and Alliances (26:14) - The difference with WWII (30:09) - The geopolitical map in 1904 (35:10) - The US alienates Indira Gandhi (42:58) - Instruments of US power (53:41) - Carrier battle groups (1:02:41) - Q&A begins (1:04:31) - The appeal of the USSR (1:09:36) - The last communist premier (1:15:42) - India and China's lost opportunity (1:58:04) - Bismark's cunning (2:03:05) - Training US officers (2:07:03) - Cruelty in Russian history Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Thu, January 09, 2025
Tyler Cowen - the #1 bottleneck to AI progress is humans
I interviewed Tyler Cowen at the Progress Conference 2024. As always, I had a blast. This is my fourth interview with him – and yet I’m always hearing new stuff. We talked about why he thinks AI won't drive explosive economic growth, the real bottlenecks on world progress, him now writing for AIs instead of humans, and the difficult relationship between being cultured and fostering growth – among many other things in the full episode. Thanks to the Roots of Progress Institute (with special thanks to Jason Crawford and Heike Larson) for such a wonderful conference, and to FreeThink for the videography. Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here . Sponsors I’m grateful to Tyler for volunteering to say a few words about Jane Street . It's the first time that a guest has participated in the sponsorship. I hope you can see why Tyler and I think so highly of Jane Street. To learn more about their open rules, go to janestreet.com/dwarkesh . Timestamps (00:00:00) Economic Growth and AI (00:14:57) Founder Mode and increasing variance (00:29:31) Effective Altruism and Progress Studies (00:33:05) What AI changes for Tyler (00:44:57) The slow diffusion of innovation (00:49:53) Stalin's library (00:52:19) DC vs SF vs EU Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Fri, December 27, 2024
I'm hiring!
In order to apply, or to refer someone else, please fill out this short form ! For more information, visit dwarkeshpatel.com/roles . Our mission is to publish the highest quality intellectual content in the world, to find the David Reichs and Sarah Paines of every field, and to produce the best contemporaneous coverage of the emergence of AGI. I need the help of two key partners in order to achieve this mission. * General Manager : A killer operator who will run and lead our business. * Editor-in-Chief : A polymath and a shrewd promoter with amazing taste. If you refer somebody I end up hiring, I'll pay you $20,000. If you know someone exceptional who would be a great fit, please share this with them! FAQ Will keep updated. Q: What happened to the COO position you posted about a few months ago? Tons of super talented people applied. The role wasn't filled because I had incorrectly combined two distinct positions into one. This was not due to any shortcomings in the applicant pool, and I’m very grateful to everyone who applied! Q: What's the timeline? A: I'll keep applications open until January 20th and will start reviewing and scheduling interviews from January 8th. Early applications will be reviewed first. Q: I applied for the COO role previously - can I apply again? A: Yes! While many incredibly talented people applied for the COO role, I've now split the role into two more focused positions. If you applied before, you're welcome to apply again, though please note that I have already reviewed and considered your previous application. Q: What's the compensation? A: Compensation will be competitive with major tech companies. Q: What about location? A: I'm flexible on location but have a preference for hybrid work with some time in my SF office when in-person collaboration is valuable. Full remote is possible for exceptional candidates. Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkeshpatel.com/subscribe
Thu, December 26, 2024
Adam Brown – How Future Civilizations Could Change The Laws of Physics
Adam Brown is a founder and lead of BlueShift with is cracking maths and reasoning at Google DeepMind and a theoretical physicist at Stanford. We discuss: destroying the light cone with vacuum decay, holographic principle, mining black holes, & what it would take to train LLMs that can make Einstein level conceptual breakthroughs. Stupefying, entertaining, & terrifying. Enjoy! Watch on YouTube , read the transcript , listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or your favorite platform. Sponsors - Deepmind, Meta, Anthropic, and OpenAI, partner with Scale for high quality data to fuel post-training Publicly available data is running out - to keep developing smarter and smarter models, labs will need to rely on Scale’s data foundry, which combines subject matter experts with AI models to generate fresh data and break through the data wall. Learn more at scale.ai/dwarkesh . - Jane Street is looking to hire their next generation of leaders. Their deep learning team is looking for ML researchers, FPGA programmers, and CUDA programmers. Summer internships are open for just a few more weeks. If you want to stand out, take a crack at their new Kaggle competition. To learn more, go to janestreet.com/dwarkesh . - This episode is brought to you by Stripe , financial infrastructure for the internet. Millions of companies from Anthropic to Amazon use Stripe to accept payments, automate financial processes and grow their revenue. Timestamps (00:00:00) - Changing the laws of physics (00:26:05) - Why is our universe the way it is (00:37:30) - Making Einstein level AGI (01:00:31) - Physics stagnation and particle colliders (01:11:10) - Hitchhiking (01:29:00) - Nagasaki (01:36:19) - Adam’s career (01:43:25) - Mining black holes (01:59:42) - The holographic principle (02:23:25) - Philosophy of infinities (02:31:42) - Engineering constraints for future civilizations Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Wed, November 13, 2024
Gwern Branwen - How an Anonymous Researcher Predicted AI's Trajectory
Gwern is a pseudonymous researcher and writer. He was one of the first people to see LLM scaling coming. If you've read his blog , you know he's one of the most interesting polymathic thinkers alive. In order to protect Gwern's anonymity, I proposed interviewing him in person, and having my friend Chris Painter voice over his words after. This amused him enough that he agreed. After the episode, I convinced Gwern to create a donation page where people can help sustain what he's up to. Please go here to contribute. Read the full transcript here . Sponsors: * Jane Street is looking to hire their next generation of leaders. Their deep learning team is looking for ML researchers, FPGA programmers, and CUDA programmers. Summer internships are open - if you want to stand out, take a crack at their new Kaggle competition. To learn more, go to janestreet.com/dwarkesh . * Turing provides complete post-training services for leading AI labs like OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and Gemini. They specialize in model evaluation, SFT, RLHF, and DPO to enhance models’ reasoning, coding, and multimodal capabilities. Learn more at turing.com/dwarkesh . * This episode is brought to you by Stripe , financial infrastructure for the internet. Millions of companies from Anthropic to Amazon use Stripe to accept payments, automate financial processes and grow their revenue. If you’re interested in advertising on the podcast, check out this page . Timestamps 00:00:00 - Anonymity 00:01:09 - Automating Steve Jobs 00:04:38 - Isaac Newton's theory of progress 00:06:36 - Grand theory of intelligence 00:10:39 - Seeing scaling early 00:21:04 - AGI Timelines 00:22:54 - What to do in remaining 3 years until AGI 00:26:29 - Influencing the shoggoth with writing 00:30:50 - Human vs artificial intelligence 00:33:52 - Rabbit holes 00:38:48 - Hearing impairment 00:43:00 - Wikipedia editing 00:47:43 - Gwern.net 00:50:20 - Counterfactual careers 00:54:30 - Borges & literature 01:01:32 - Gwern's intelligence and process 01:11:03 - A day in the life of Gwern 01:19:16 - Gwern's finances 01:25:05 - The diversity of AI minds 01:27:24 - GLP drugs and obesity 01:31:08 - Drug experimentation 01:33:
Wed, October 02, 2024
Dylan Patel & Jon (Asianometry) – How the Semiconductor Industry Actually Works
A bonanza on the semiconductor industry and hardware scaling to AGI by the end of the decade. Dylan Patel runs Semianalysis , the leading publication and research firm on AI hardware. Jon Y runs Asianometry , the world’s best YouTube channel on semiconductors and business history. * What Xi would do if he became scaling pilled * $ 1T+ in datacenter buildout by end of decade Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Sponsors: * Jane Street is looking to hire their next generation of leaders. Their deep learning team is looking for FPGA programmers, CUDA programmers, and ML researchers. To learn more about their full time roles, internship, tech podcast, and upcoming Kaggle competition, go here . * This episode is brought to you by Stripe , financial infrastructure for the internet. Millions of companies from Anthropic to Amazon use Stripe to accept payments, automate financial processes and grow their revenue. If you’re interested in advertising on the podcast, check out this page . Timestamps 00:00:00 – Xi's path to AGI 00:04:20 – Liang Mong Song 00:08:25 – How semiconductors get better 00:11:16 – China can centralize compute 00:18:50 – Export controls & sanctions 00:32:51 – Huawei's intense culture 00:38:51 – Why the semiconductor industry is so str
Wed, September 18, 2024
Daniel Yergin – Oil Explains the Entire 20th Century
Unless you understand the history of oil, you cannot understand the rise of America, WW1, WW2, secular stagnation, the Middle East, Ukraine, how Xi and Putin think, and basically anything else that's happened since 1860. It was a great honor to interview Daniel Yergin, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Prize - the best history of oil ever written (which makes it the best history of the 20th century ever written). Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Sponsors: This episode is brought to you by Stripe , financial infrastructure for the internet. Millions of companies from Anthropic to Amazon use Stripe to accept payments, automate financial processes and grow their revenue. This episode is brought to you by Suno, pioneers in AI-generated music. Suno's technology allows artists to experiment with melodic forms and structures in unprecedented ways. From chart-toppers to avant-garde compositions, Suno is redefining musical creativity. If you're an ML researcher passionate about shaping the future of music, email your resume to dwarkesh@suno.com. If you’re interested in advertising on the podcast, check out this page . Timestamps (00:00:00) – Beginning of the oil industry (00:13:37) – World War I & II (00:25:06) – The Middle East (00:47:04) – Yergin’s conversations with Putin & Modi (01:04:36) – Writing through stories (01:10:26) – The renewable energy transition Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Thu, August 29, 2024
David Reich - How One Small Tribe Conquered the World 70,000 Years Ago
I had no idea how wild human history was before chatting with the geneticist of ancient DNA David Reich . Human history has been again and again a story of one group figuring ‘something’ out, and then basically wiping everyone else out. From the tribe of 1k-10k modern humans who killed off all the other human species 70,000 years ago; to the Yamnaya horse nomads 5,000 years ago who killed off 90+% of (then) Europeans and also destroyed the Indus Valley. So much of what we thought we knew about human history is turning out to be wrong, from the ‘Out of Africa’ theory to the evolution of language, and this is all thanks to the research from David Reich’s lab. Buy David Reich’s fascinating book, Who We Are How We Got Here . Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Sponsor This episode is brought to you by Stripe , financial infrastructure for the internet. Millions of companies from Anthropic to Amazon use Stripe to accept payments, automate financial processes and grow their revenue. If you’re interested in advertising on the podcast, check out this page . Timestamps (00:00:00) – Archaic and modern humans gene flow (00:20:24) – How early modern humans dominated the world (00:39:59) – How bubonic plague rewrote history (00:50:03) – Was agriculture terrible for humans? (00:59:28) – Yamnaya expansion and how populations collide (01:15:39) – “Lost civilizations” and our Neanderthal ancestry (01:31:32) – The DNA Challenge (01:41:38) – David’s career: the genetic vocation Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Thu, August 22, 2024
Joe Carlsmith - Otherness and control in the age of AGI
Chatted with Joe Carlsmith about whether we can trust power/techno-capital, how to not end up like Stalin in our urge to control the future, gentleness towards the artificial Other, and much more. Check out Joe's sequence on Otherness and Control in the Age of AGI here . Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Sponsors: - Bland.ai is an AI agent that automates phone calls in any language, 24/7. Their technology uses "conversational pathways" for accurate, versatile communication across sales, operations, and customer support. You can try Bland yourself by calling 415-549-9654. Enterprises can get exclusive access to their advanced model at bland.ai/dwarkesh . - Stripe is financial infrastructure for the internet. Millions of companies from Anthropic to Amazon use Stripe to accept payments, automate financial processes and grow their revenue. If you’re interested in advertising on the podcast, check out this page . Timestamps: (00:00:00) - Understanding the Basic Alignment Story (00:44:04) - Monkeys Inventing Humans (00:46:43) - Nietzsche, C.S. Lewis, and AI (1:22:51) - How should we treat AIs (1:52:33) - Balancing Being a Humanist and a Scholar (2:05:02) - Explore exploit tradeoffs and AI Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Wed, July 24, 2024
Patrick McKenzie - How a Discord Server Saved Thousands of Lives
I talked with Patrick McKenzie (known online as patio11) about how a small team he ran over a Discord server got vaccines into Americans' arms: A story of broken incentives, outrageous incompetence, and how a few individuals with high agency saved 1000s of lives. Enjoy! Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Sponsor This episode is brought to you by Stripe , financial infrastructure for the internet. Millions of companies from Anthropic to Amazon use Stripe to accept payments, automate financial processes and grow their revenue. Timestamps (00:00:00) – Why hackers on Discord had to save thousands of lives (00:17:26) – How politics crippled vaccine distribution (00:38:19) – Fundraising for VaccinateCA (00:51:09) – Why tech needs to understand how government works (00:58:58) – What is crypto good for? (01:13:07) – How the US government leverages big tech to violate rights (01:24:36) – Can the US have nice things like Japan? (01:26:41) – Financial plumbing & money laundering: a how-not-to guide (01:37:42) – Maximizing your value: why some people negotiate better (01:42:14) – Are young people too busy playing Factorio to found startups? (01:57:30) – The need for a post-mortem Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Wed, June 26, 2024
Tony Blair - Life of a PM, The Deep State, Lee Kuan Yew, & AI's 1914 Moment
I chatted with Tony Blair about: - What he learned from Lee Kuan Yew - Intelligence agencies track record on Iraq & Ukraine - What he tells the dozens of world leaders who come seek advice from him - How much of a PM’s time is actually spent governing - What will AI’s July 1914 moment look like from inside the Cabinet? Enjoy! Watch the video on YouTube . Read the full transcript here . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Sponsors - Prelude Security is the world’s leading cyber threat management automation platform. Prelude Detect quickly transforms threat intelligence into validated protections so organizations can know with certainty that their defenses will protect them against the latest threats. Prelude is backed by Sequoia Capital, Insight Partners, The MITRE Corporation, CrowdStrike, and other leading investors. Learn more here . - This episode is brought to you by Stripe , financial infrastructure for the internet. Millions of companies from Anthropic to Amazon use Stripe to accept payments, automate financial processes and grow their revenue. If you’re interested in advertising on the podcast, check out this page . Timestamps (00:00:00) – A prime minister’s constraints (00:04:12) – CEOs vs. politicians (00:10:31) – COVID, AI, & how government deals with crisis (00:21:24) – Learning from Lee Kuan Yew (00:27:37) – Foreign policy & intelligence (00:31:12) – How much leadership actually matters (00:35:34) – Private vs. public tech (00:39:14) – Advising global leaders (00:46:45) – The unipolar moment in the 90s Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Tue, June 11, 2024
Francois Chollet, Mike Knoop - LLMs won’t lead to AGI - $1,000,000 Prize to find true solution
Here is my conversation with Francois Chollet and Mike Knoop on the $1 million ARC-AGI Prize they're launching today . I did a bunch of socratic grilling throughout, but Francois’s arguments about why LLMs won’t lead to AGI are very interesting and worth thinking through. It was really fun discussing/debating the cruxes. Enjoy! Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here . Timestamps (00:00:00) – The ARC benchmark (00:11:10) – Why LLMs struggle with ARC (00:19:00) – Skill vs intelligence (00:27:55) - Do we need “AGI” to automate most jobs? (00:48:28) – Future of AI progress: deep learning + program synthesis (01:00:40) – How Mike Knoop got nerd-sniped by ARC (01:08:37) – Million $ ARC Prize (01:10:33) – Resisting benchmark saturation (01:18:08) – ARC scores on frontier vs open source models (01:26:19) – Possible solutions to ARC Prize Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Tue, June 04, 2024
Leopold Aschenbrenner - China/US Super Intelligence Race, 2027 AGI, & The Return of History
Chatted with my friend Leopold Aschenbrenner on the trillion dollar nationalized cluster, CCP espionage at AI labs, how unhobblings and scaling can lead to 2027 AGI, dangers of outsourcing clusters to Middle East, leaving OpenAI, and situational awareness. Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Follow Leopold on Twitter . Timestamps (00:00:00) – The trillion-dollar cluster and unhobbling (00:20:31) – AI 2028: The return of history (00:40:26) – Espionage & American AI superiority (01:08:20) – Geopolitical implications of AI (01:31:23) – State-led vs. private-led AI (02:12:23) – Becoming Valedictorian of Columbia at 19 (02:30:35) – What happened at OpenAI (02:45:11) – Accelerating AI research progress (03:25:58) – Alignment (03:41:26) – On Germany, and understanding foreign perspectives (03:57:04) – Dwarkesh’s immigration story and path to the podcast (04:07:58) – Launching an AGI hedge fund (04:19:14) – Lessons from WWII (04:29:08) – Coda: Frederick the Great Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Wed, May 15, 2024
John Schulman (OpenAI Cofounder) - Reasoning, RLHF, & Plan for 2027 AGI
Chatted with John Schulman (cofounded OpenAI and led ChatGPT creation) on how posttraining tames the shoggoth, and the nature of the progress to come... Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Timestamps (00:00:00) - Pre-training, post-training, and future capabilities (00:16:57) - Plan for AGI 2025 (00:29:19) - Teaching models to reason (00:40:50) - The Road to ChatGPT (00:52:13) - What makes for a good RL researcher? (01:00:58) - Keeping humans in the loop (01:15:15) - State of research, plateaus, and moats Sponsors If you’re interested in advertising on the podcast, fill out this form . * Your DNA shapes everything about you. Want to know how? Take 10% off our Premium DNA kit with code DWARKESH at mynucleus.com . * CommandBar is an AI user assistant that any software product can embed to non-annoyingly assist, support, and unleash their users. Used by forward-thinking CX, product, growth, and marketing teams. Learn more at commandbar.com . Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Thu, April 18, 2024
Mark Zuckerberg - Llama 3, Open Sourcing $10b Models, & Caesar Augustus
Mark Zuckerberg on: - Llama 3 - open sourcing towards AGI - custom silicon, synthetic data, & energy constraints on scaling - Caesar Augustus, intelligence explosion, bioweapons, $10b models, & much more Enjoy! Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Human edited transcript with helpful links here . Timestamps (00:00:00) - Llama 3 (00:08:32) - Coding on path to AGI (00:25:24) - Energy bottlenecks (00:33:20) - Is AI the most important technology ever? (00:37:21) - Dangers of open source (00:53:57) - Caesar Augustus and metaverse (01:04:53) - Open sourcing the $10b model & custom silicon (01:15:19) - Zuck as CEO of Google+ Sponsors If you’re interested in advertising on the podcast, fill out this form . * This episode is brought to you by Stripe , financial infrastructure for the internet. Millions of companies from Anthropic to Amazon use Stripe to accept payments, automate financial processes and grow their revenue. Learn more at stripe.com . * V7 Go is a tool to automate multimodal tasks using GenAI, reliably and at scale. Use code DWARKESH20 for 20% off on the pro plan. Learn more here . * CommandBar is an AI user assistant that any software product can embed to non-annoyingly assist, support, and unleash their users. Used by forward-thinking CX, product, growth, and marketing teams. Learn more at commandbar.com . Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Thu, March 28, 2024
Sholto Douglas & Trenton Bricken - How to Build & Understand GPT-7's Mind
Had so much fun chatting with my good friends Trenton Bricken and Sholto Douglas on the podcast. No way to summarize it, except: This is the best context dump out there on how LLMs are trained, what capabilities they're likely to soon have, and what exactly is going on inside them. You would be shocked how much of what I know about this field, I've learned just from talking with them. To the extent that you've enjoyed my other AI interviews, now you know why. So excited to put this out. Enjoy! I certainly did :) Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. There's a transcript with links to all the papers the boys were throwing down - may help you follow along. Follow Trenton and Sholto on Twitter. Timestamps (00:00:00) - Long contexts (00:16:12) - Intelligence is just associations (00:32:35) - Intelligence explosion & great researchers (01:06:52) - Superposition & secret communication (01:22:34) - Agents & true reasoning (01:34:40) - How Sholto & Trenton got into AI research (02:07:16) - Are feature spaces the wrong way to think about intelligence? (02:21:12) - Will interp actually work on superhuman models (02:45:05) - Sholto’s technical challenge for the audience (03:03:57) - Rapid fire Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Wed, February 28, 2024
Demis Hassabis - Scaling, Superhuman AIs, AlphaZero atop LLMs, Rogue Nations Threat
Here is my episode with Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind We discuss: * Why scaling is an artform * Adding search, planning, & AlphaZero type training atop LLMs * Making sure rogue nations can't steal weights * The right way to align superhuman AIs and do an intelligence explosion Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here . Timestamps (0:00:00) - Nature of intelligence (0:05:56) - RL atop LLMs (0:16:31) - Scaling and alignment (0:24:13) - Timelines and intelligence explosion (0:28:42) - Gemini training (0:35:30) - Governance of superhuman AIs (0:40:42) - Safety, open source, and security of weights (0:47:00) - Multimodal and further progress (0:54:18) - Inside Google DeepMind Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Wed, February 21, 2024
Patrick Collison (Stripe CEO) - Craft, Beauty, & The Future of Payments
We discuss: * what it takes to process $1 trillion/year * how to build multi-decade APIs, companies, and relationships * what's next for Stripe (increasing the GDP of the internet is quite an open ended prompt, and the Collison brothers are just getting started). Plus the amazing stuff they're doing at Arc Institute , the financial infrastructure for AI agents, playing devil's advocate against progress studies, and much more. Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Timestamps (00:00:00) - Advice for 20-30 year olds (00:12:12) - Progress studies (00:22:21) - Arc Institute (00:34:27) - AI & Fast Grants (00:43:46) - Stripe history (00:55:44) - Stripe Climate (01:01:39) - Beauty & APIs (01:11:51) - Financial innards (01:28:16) - Stripe culture & future (01:41:56) - Virtues of big businesses (01:51:41) - John Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Wed, January 31, 2024
Tyler Cowen - Hayek, Keynes, & Smith on AI, Animal Spirits, Anarchy, & Growth
It was a great pleasure speaking with Tyler Cowen for the 3rd time. We discussed GOAT: Who is the Greatest Economist of all Time and Why Does it Matter? , especially in the context of how the insights of Hayek, Keynes, Smith, and other great economists help us make sense of AI, growth, animal spirits, prediction markets, alignment, central planning, and much more. The topics covered in this episode are too many to summarize. Hope you enjoy! Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Timestamps (0:00:00) - John Maynard Keynes (00:17:16) - Controversy (00:25:02) - Fredrick von Hayek (00:47:41) - John Stuart Mill (00:52:41) - Adam Smith (00:58:31) - Coase, Schelling, & George (01:08:07) - Anarchy (01:13:16) - Cheap WMDs (01:23:18) - Technocracy & political philosophy (01:34:16) - AI & Scaling Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Tue, January 23, 2024
Lessons from The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert Caro [Narration]
This is a narration of my blog post, Lessons from The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert Caro . You read the full post here: https://www.dwarkeshpatel.com/p/lyndon-johnson Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Follow me on Twitter for updates on future posts and episodes. Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Fri, January 19, 2024
Will scaling work? [Narration]
This is a narration of my blog post, Will scaling work? . You read the full post here: https://www.dwarkeshpatel.com/p/will-scaling-work Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Follow me on Twitter for updates on future posts and episodes. Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Wed, November 29, 2023
Jung Chang - Living through Cultural Revolution and the Crimes of Mao
A true honor to speak with Jung Chang. She is the author of Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China (sold 15+ million copies worldwide) and Mao: The Unknown Story . We discuss: - what it was like growing up during the Cultural Revolution as the daughter of a denounced official - why the CCP continues to worship the biggest mass murderer in human history. - how exactly Communist totalitarianism was able to subjugate a billion people - why Chinese leaders like Xi and Deng who suffered from the Cultural Revolution don't condemn Mao - how Mao starved and killed 40 million people during The Great Leap Forward in order to exchange food for Soviet weapons Wild Swans is the most moving book I've ever read. It was a real privilege to speak with its author. Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Timestamps (00:00:00) - Growing up during Cultural Revolution (00:15:58) - Could officials have overthrown Mao? (00:34:09) - Great Leap Forward (00:48:12) - Modern support of Mao (01:03:24) - Life as peasant (01:21:30) - Psychology of communist society Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Wed, November 22, 2023
Andrew Roberts - SV's Napoleon Cult, Why Hitler Lost WW2, Churchill as Applied Historian
Andrew Roberts is the world's best biographer and one of the leading historians of our time. We discussed * Churchill the applied historian, * Napoleon the startup founder, * why Nazi ideology cost Hitler WW2, * drones, reconnaissance, and other aspects of the future of war, * Iraq, Afghanistan, Korea, Ukraine, & Taiwan. Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Timestamps (00:00:00) - Post WW2 conflicts (00:10:57) - Ukraine (00:16:33) - How Truman Prevented Nuclear War (00:22:49) - Taiwan (00:27:15) - Churchill (00:35:11) - Gaza & future wars (00:39:05) - Could Hitler have won WW2? (00:48:00) - Surprise attacks (00:59:33) - Napoleon and startup founders (01:14:06) - Robert’s insane productivity Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Wed, November 15, 2023
Dominic Cummings - COVID, Brexit, & Fixing Western Governance
Here is my interview with Dominic Cummings on why Western governments are so dangerously broken, and how to fix them before an even more catastrophic crisis. Dominic was Chief Advisor to the Prime Minister during COVID, and before that, director of Vote Leave (which masterminded the 2016 Brexit referendum). Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Timestamps (00:00:00) - One day in COVID… (00:08:26) - Why is government broken? (00:29:10) - Civil service (00:38:27) - Opportunity wasted? (00:49:35) - Rishi Sunak and Number 10 vs 11 (00:55:13) - Cyber, nuclear, bio risks (01:02:04) - Intelligence & defense agencies (01:23:32) - Bismarck & Lee Kuan Yew (01:37:46) - How to fix the government? (01:56:43) - Taiwan (02:00:10) - Russia (02:07:12) - Bismarck’s career as an example of AI (mis)alignment (02:17:37) - Odyssean education Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Tue, October 31, 2023
Paul Christiano - Preventing an AI Takeover
Paul Christiano is the world’s leading AI safety researcher. My full episode with him is out! We discuss: - Does he regret inventing RLHF, and is alignment necessarily dual-use? - Why he has relatively modest timelines (40% by 2040, 15% by 2030), - What do we want post-AGI world to look like (do we want to keep gods enslaved forever)? - Why he’s leading the push to get to labs develop responsible scaling policies, and what it would take to prevent an AI coup or bioweapon, - His current research into a new proof system, and how this could solve alignment by explaining model's behavior - and much more. Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Open Philanthropy Open Philanthropy is currently hiring for twenty-two different roles to reduce catastrophic risks from fast-moving advances in AI and biotechnology, including grantmaking, research, and operations. For more information and to apply, please see the application : https://www.openphilanthropy.org/research/new-roles-on-our-gcr-team/ The deadline to apply is November 9th ; make sure to check out those roles before they close. Timestamps (00:00:00) - What do we want post-AGI world to look like? (00:24:25) - Timelines (00:45:28) - Evolution vs gradient descent (00:54:53) - Misalignment and takeover (01:17:23) - Is alignment dual-use? (01:31:38) - Responsible scaling policies (01:58:25) - Paul’s alignment research (02:35:01) - Will this revolutionize theoretical CS and math? (02:46:11) - How Paul invented RLHF (02:55:10) - Disagreements with Carl Shulman (03:01:53) - Long TSMC but not NVIDIA Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Thu, October 26, 2023
Shane Legg (DeepMind Founder) - 2028 AGI, New Architectures, Aligning Superhuman Models
I had a lot of fun chatting with Shane Legg - Founder and Chief AGI Scientist, Google DeepMind! We discuss: * Why he expects AGI around 2028 * How to align superhuman models * What new architectures needed for AGI * Has Deepmind sped up capabilities or safety more? * Why multimodality will be next big landmark * and much more Watch full episode on YouTube , Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read full transcript here . Timestamps (0:00:00) - Measuring AGI (0:11:41) - Do we need new architectures? (0:16:26) - Is search needed for creativity? (0:19:19) - Superhuman alignment (0:29:58) - Impact of Deepmind on safety vs capabilities (0:34:03) - Timelines (0:41:24) - Multimodality Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Thu, October 12, 2023
Grant Sanderson (3Blue1Brown) - Past, Present, & Future of Mathematics
I had a lot of fun chatting with Grant Sanderson (who runs the excellent 3Blue1Brown YouTube channel) about: - Whether advanced math requires AGI - What careers should mathematically talented students pursue - Why Grant plans on doing a stint as a high school teacher - Tips for self teaching - Does Godel’s incompleteness theorem actually matter - Why are good explanations so hard to find? - And much more Watch on YouTube . Listen on Spotify , Apple Podcasts , or any other podcast platform. Full transcript here . Timestamps (0:00:00) - Does winning math competitions require AGI? (0:08:24) - Where to allocate mathematical talent? (0:17:34) - Grant’s miracle year (0:26:44) - Prehistoric humans and math (0:33:33) - Why is a lot of math so new? (0:44:44) - Future of education (0:56:28) - Math helped me realize I wasn’t that smart (0:59:25) - Does Godel’s incompleteness theorem matter? (1:05:12) - How Grant makes videos (1:10:13) - Grant’s math exposition competition (1:20:44) - Self teaching Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Wed, October 04, 2023
Sarah C. M. Paine - WW2, Taiwan, Ukraine, & Maritime vs Continental Powers
I learned so much from Sarah Paine, Professor of History and Strategy at the Naval War College. We discuss: - how continental vs maritime powers think and how this explains Xi & Putin's decisions - how a war with China over Taiwan would shake out and whether it could go nuclear - why the British Empire fell apart, why China went communist, how Hitler and Japan could have coordinated to win WW2, and whether Japanese occupation was good for Korea, Taiwan and Manchuria - plus other lessons from WW2, Cold War, and Sino-Japanese War - how to study history properly, and why leaders keep making the same mistakes If you want to learn more, check out her books - they’re some of the best military history I’ve ever read. Watch on YouTube , listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript . Timestamps (0:00:00) - Grand strategy (0:11:59) - Death ground (0:23:19) - WW1 (0:39:23) - Writing history (0:50:25) - Japan in WW2 (0:59:58) - Ukraine (1:10:50) - Japan/Germany vs Iraq/Afghanistan occupation (1:21:25) - Chinese invasion of Taiwan (1:51:26) - Communists & Axis (2:08:34) - Continental vs maritime powers Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Thu, August 17, 2023
George Hotz vs Eliezer Yudkowsky AI Safety Debate
George Hotz and Eliezer Yudkowsky hashed out their positions on AI safety. It was a really fun debate. No promises but there might be a round 2 where we better hone in on the cruxes that we began to identify here. Watch the livestreamed YouTube version (high quality video will be up next week). Catch the Twitter stream . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Check back here in about 24 hours for the full transcript. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.dwarkeshpatel.com
Tue, August 08, 2023
Dario Amodei (Anthropic CEO) - Scaling, Alignment, & AI Progress
Here is my conversation with Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic. Dario is hilarious and has fascinating takes on what these models are doing, why they scale so well, and what it will take to align them. Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Timestamps (00:00:00) - Introduction (00:01:00) - Scaling (00:15:46) - Language (00:22:58) - Economic Usefulness (00:38:05) - Bioterrorism (00:43:35) - Cybersecurity (00:47:19) - Alignment & mechanistic interpretability (00:57:43) - Does alignment research require scale? (01:05:30) - Misuse vs misalignment (01:09:06) - What if AI goes well? (01:11:05) - China (01:15:11) - How to think about alignment (01:31:31) - Is modern security good enough? (01:36:09) - Inefficiencies in training (01:45:53) - Anthropic’s Long Term Benefit Trust (01:51:18) - Is Claude conscious? (01:56:14) - Keeping a low profile Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Wed, July 12, 2023
Andy Matuschak - Self-Teaching, Spaced Repetition, & Why Books Don’t Work
A few weeks ago, I sat beside Andy Matuschak to record how he reads a textbook. Even though my own job is to learn things, I was shocked with how much more intense, painstaking, and effective his learning process was. So I asked if we could record a conversation about how he learns and a bunch of other topics: * How he identifies and interrogates his confusion (much harder than it seems, and requires an extremely effortful and slow pace) * Why memorization is essential to understanding and decision-making * How come some people (like Tyler Cowen) can integrate so much information without an explicit note taking or spaced repetition system. * How LLMs and video games will change education * How independent researchers and writers can make money * The balance of freedom and discipline in education * Why we produce fewer von Neumann-like prodigies nowadays * How multi-trillion dollar companies like Apple (where he was previously responsible for bedrock iOS features) manage to coordinate millions of different considerations (from the cost of different components to the needs of users, etc) into new products designed by 10s of 1000s of people. Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. To see Andy’s process in action, check out the video where we record him studying a quantum physics textbook, talking aloud about his thought process, and using his memory system prototype to internalize the material. You can check out his website and personal notes , and follow him on Twitter . Cometeer Visit cometeer.com/lunar for $20 off your first order on the best coffee of your life! If you want to sponsor an episode, contact me at dwarkesh.sanjay.patel@gmail.com . Timestamps (00:00:52) - Skillful reading (00:02:30) - Do people care about understanding? (00:06:52) - Structuring effective self-teaching (00:16:37) - Memory and forgetting (00:33:10) - Andy’s memory practice (00:40:07) - Intellectual stamina (00:44:27) - New media for learning (video, g
Mon, June 26, 2023
Carl Shulman (Pt 2) - AI Takeover, Bio & Cyber Attacks, Detecting Deception, & Humanity's Far Future
The second half of my 7 hour conversation with Carl Shulman is out! My favorite part! And the one that had the biggest impact on my worldview. Here, Carl lays out how an AI takeover might happen: * AI can threaten mutually assured destruction from bioweapons, * use cyber attacks to take over physical infrastructure, * build mechanical armies, * spread seed AIs we can never exterminate, * offer tech and other advantages to collaborating countries, etc Plus we talk about a whole bunch of weird and interesting topics which Carl has thought about: * what is the far future best case scenario for humanity * what it would look like to have AI make thousands of years of intellectual progress in a month * how do we detect deception in superhuman models * does space warfare favor defense or offense * is a Malthusian state inevitable in the long run * why markets haven't priced in explosive economic growth * & much more Carl also explains how he developed such a rigorous, thoughtful, and interdisciplinary model of the biggest problems in the world. Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Catch part 1 here Timestamps ( 0:00:00 ) - Intro ( 0:00:47 ) - AI takeover via cyber or bio ( 0:32:27 ) - Can we coordinate against AI? ( 0:53:49 ) - Human vs AI colonizers ( 1:04:55 ) - Probability of AI takeover ( 1:21:56 ) - Can we detect deception? ( 1:47:25 ) - Using AI to solve coordination problems ( 1:56:01 ) - Partial alignment <
Wed, June 14, 2023
Carl Shulman (Pt 1) - Intelligence Explosion, Primate Evolution, Robot Doublings, & Alignment
In terms of the depth and range of topics, this episode is the best I’ve done. No part of my worldview is the same after talking with Carl Shulman. He's the most interesting intellectual you've never heard of. We ended up talking for 8 hours, so I'm splitting this episode into 2 parts. This part is about Carl’s model of an intelligence explosion, which integrates everything from: * how fast algorithmic progress & hardware improvements in AI are happening, * what primate evolution suggests about the scaling hypothesis, * how soon before AIs could do large parts of AI research themselves, and whether there would be faster and faster doublings of AI researchers, * how quickly robots produced from existing factories could take over the economy. We also discuss the odds of a takeover based on whether the AI is aligned before the intelligence explosion happens, and Carl explains why he’s more optimistic than Eliezer. The next part, which I’ll release next week, is about all the specific mechanisms of an AI takeover, plus a whole bunch of other galaxy brain stuff. Maybe 3 people in the world have thought as rigorously as Carl about so many interesting topics. This was a huge pleasure. Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Timestamps (00:00:00) - Intro (00:01:32) - Intelligence Explosion (00:18:03) - Can AIs do AI research? (00:39:00) - Primate evolution (01:03:30) - Forecasting AI progress (01:34:20) - After human-level AGI (02:08:39) - AI takeover scenarios Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Tue, May 23, 2023
Richard Rhodes - Making of Atomic Bomb, AI, WW2, Oppenheimer, & Abolishing Nukes
It was a tremendous honor & pleasure to interview Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb We discuss - similarities between AI progress & Manhattan Project (developing a powerful, unprecedented, & potentially apocalyptic technology within an uncertain arms-race situation) - visiting starving former Soviet scientists during fall of Soviet Union - whether Oppenheimer was a spy, & consulting on the Nolan movie - living through WW2 as a child - odds of nuclear war in Ukraine, Taiwan, Pakistan, & North Korea - how the US pulled of such a massive secret wartime scientific & industrial project Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Timestamps (0:00:00) - Oppenheimer movie (0:06:22) - Was the bomb inevitable? (0:29:10) - Firebombing vs nuclear vs hydrogen bombs (0:49:44) - Stalin & the Soviet program (1:08:24) - Deterrence, disarmament, North Korea, Taiwan (1:33:12) - Oppenheimer as lab director (1:53:40) - AI progress vs Manhattan Project (1:59:50) - Living through WW2 (2:16:45) - Secrecy (2:26:34) - Wisdom & war Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Thu, April 06, 2023
Eliezer Yudkowsky - Why AI Will Kill Us, Aligning LLMs, Nature of Intelligence, SciFi, & Rationality
For 4 hours, I tried to come up reasons for why AI might not kill us all, and Eliezer Yudkowsky explained why I was wrong. We also discuss his call to halt AI, why LLMs make alignment harder, what it would take to save humanity, his millions of words of sci-fi, and much more. If you want to get to the crux of the conversation, fast forward to 2:35:00 through 3:43:54. Here we go through and debate the main reasons I still think doom is unlikely. Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Timestamps (0:00:00) - TIME article (0:09:06) - Are humans aligned? (0:37:35) - Large language models (1:07:15) - Can AIs help with alignment? (1:30:17) - Society’s response to AI (1:44:42) - Predictions (or lack thereof) (1:56:55) - Being Eliezer (2:13:06) - Othogonality (2:35:00) - Could alignment be easier than we think? (3:02:15) - What will AIs want? (3:43:54) - Writing fiction & whether rationality helps you win Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Mon, March 27, 2023
Ilya Sutskever (OpenAI Chief Scientist) - Building AGI, Alignment, Future Models, Spies, Microsoft, Taiwan, & Enlightenment
I went over to the OpenAI offices in San Fransisco to ask the Chief Scientist and cofounder of OpenAI, Ilya Sutskever , about: * time to AGI * leaks and spies * what's after generative models * post AGI futures * working with Microsoft and competing with Google * difficulty of aligning superhuman AI Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Timestamps (00:00) - Time to AGI (05:57) - What’s after generative models? (10:57) - Data, models, and research (15:27) - Alignment (20:53) - Post AGI Future (26:56) - New ideas are overrated (36:22) - Is progress inevitable? (41:27) - Future Breakthroughs Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Wed, March 22, 2023
Nat Friedman - Reading Ancient Scrolls, Open Source, & AI
It is said that the two greatest problems of history are: how to account for the rise of Rome, and how to account for her fall. If so, then the volcanic ashes spewed by Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD - which entomb the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum in South Italy - hold history’s greatest prize. For beneath those ashes lies the only salvageable library from the classical world. Nat Friedman was the CEO of Github form 2018 to 2021. Before that, he started and sold two companies - Ximian and Xamarin . He is also the founder of AI Grant and California YIMBY . And most recently, he has created and funded the Vesuvius Challenge - a million dollar prize for reading an unopened Herculaneum scroll for the very first time. If we can decipher these scrolls, we may be able to recover lost gospels, forgotten epics, and even missing works of Aristotle. We also discuss the future of open source and AI, running Github and building Copilot, and why EMH is a lie. Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Timestamps (0:00:00) - Vesuvius Challenge (0:30:00) - Finding points of leverage (0:37:39) - Open Source in AI (0:40:32) - Github Acquisition (0:50:18) - Copilot origin Story (1:11:47) - Nat.org (1:32:56) - Questions from Twitter Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Mon, March 13, 2023
Brett Harrison - FTX US Former President & HFT Veteran Speaks Out
I flew out to Chicago to interview Brett Harrison , who is the former President of FTX US President and founder of Architect . In his first longform interview since the fall of FTX, he speak in great detail about his entire tenure there and about SBF’s dysfunctional leadership. He talks about how the inner circle of Gary Wang, Nishad Singh, and SBF mismanaged the company, controlled the codebase, got distracted by media, and even threatened him for his letter of resignation. In what was my favorite part of the interview, we also discuss his insights about the financial system from his decades of experience in the world's largest HFT firms. And we talk about Brett's new startup, Architect , as well as the general state of crypto post-FTX. Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Timestamps (0:00:00) - Passive investing & HFT hacks (0:08:30) - Is Finance Zero-Sum? (0:18:38) - Interstellar Markets & Periodic Auctions (0:23:10) - Hiring & Programming at Jane Street (0:32:09) - Quant Culture (0:42:10) - FTX - Meeting Sam, Joining FTX US (0:58:20) - FTX - Accomplishments, Beginnings of Trouble (1:08:11) - FTX - SBF's Dysfunctional Leadership (1:26:53) - FTX - Alameda (1:33:50) - FTX - Leaving FTX, SBF"s Threats (1:45:45) - FTX - Collapse (1:53:10) - FTX - Lessons (2:04:34) - FTX - Regulators, & FTX Mafia (2:15:42) - Architect.xyz (2:30:10) - Institutional Interest & Uses of Crypto Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Wed, February 01, 2023
Marc Andreessen - AI, Crypto, 1000 Elon Musks, Regrets, Vulnerabilities, & Managerial Revolution
My podcast with the brilliant Marc Andreessen is out! We discuss: * how AI will revolutionize software * whether NFTs are useless, & whether he should be funding flying cars instead * a16z's biggest vulnerabilities * the future of fusion, education, Twitter, venture, managerialism, & big tech Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Timestamps (0:00:17) - Chewing glass (0:04:21) - AI (0:06:42) - Regrets (0:08:51) - Managerial capitalism (0:18:43) - 100 year fund (0:22:15) - Basic research (0:27:07) - $100b fund? (0:30:32) - Crypto debate (0:43:29) - Future of VC (0:50:20) - Founders (0:56:42) - a16z vulnerabilities (1:01:28) - Monetizing Twitter (1:07:09) - Future of big tech (1:14:07) - Is VC Overstaffed? Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Tue, January 24, 2023
Garett Jones - Immigration, National IQ, & Less Democracy
Garett Jones is an economist at George Mason University and the author of The Cultural Transplant , Hive Mind , and 10% Less Democracy . This episode was fun and interesting throughout! He explains: * Why national IQ matters * How migrants bring their values to their new countries * Why we should have less democracy * How the Chinese are an unstoppable global force for free markets Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Timestamps (00:00:00) - Intro (00:01:08) - Migrants Change Countries with Culture or Votes? (00:09:15) - Impact of Immigrants on Markets & Corruption (00:12:02) - 50% Open Borders? (00:16:54) - Chinese are Unstoppable Capitalists (00:21:39) - Innovation & Immigrants (00:24:53) - Open Borders for Migrants Equivalent to Americans? (00:28:54) - Let's Ignore Side Effects? (00:30:25) - Are Poor Countries Stuck? (00:32:26) - How Can Effective Altruists Increase National IQ (00:39:13) - Clone a million John von Neumann? (00:44:39) - Genetic Selection for IQ (00:47:02) - Democracy, Fed, FDA, & Presidential Power (00:49:42) - EU is a force for good? (00:55:12) - Why is America More Libertarian Than Median Voter? (00:56:19) - Is Ethnic Conflict a Short Run Problem? (00:59:38) - Bond Holder Democracy (01:04:57) - Mormonism (01:08:52) - Garett Jones's Immigration System (01:10:12) - Interviewing SBF Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Mon, January 09, 2023
Lars Doucet - Progress, Poverty, Georgism, & Why Rent is Too Damn High
One of my best episodes ever. Lars Doucet is the author of Land is a Big Deal , a book about Georgism which has been praised by Vitalik Buterin, Scott Alexander, and Noah Smith. Sam Altman is the lead investor in his new startup, ValueBase . Talking with Lars completely changed how I think about who creates value in the world and who leeches off it. We go deep into the weeds on Georgism: * Why do even the wealthiest places in the world have poverty and homelessness, and why do rents increase as fast as wages? * Why are land-owners able to extract the profits that rightly belong to labor and capital? * How would taxing the value of land alleviate speculation, NIMBYism, and income and sales taxes? Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here . Follow Lars on Twitter . Follow me on Twitter . Timestamps (00:00:00) - Intro (00:01:11) - Georgism (00:03:16) - Metaverse Housing Crises (00:07:10) - Tax Leisure? (00:13:53) - Speculation & Frontiers (00:24:33) - Social Value of Search (00:33:13) - Will Georgism Destroy The Economy? (00:38:51) - The Economics of San Francisco (00:43:31) - Transfer from Landowners to Google? (00:46:47) - Asian Tigers and Land Reform (00:51:19) - Libertarian Georgism (00:55:42) - Crypto (00:57:16) - Transitioning to Georgism (01:02:56) - Lars's Startup & Land Assessment (01:15:12) - Big Tech (01:20:50) - Space (01:23:05) - Copyright (01:25:02) - Politics of Georgism (01:33:10) - Someone Is Always Collecting Rents Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Tue, January 03, 2023
Holden Karnofsky - Transformative AI & Most Important Century
Holden Karnofsky is the co-CEO of Open Philanthropy and co-founder of GiveWell . He is also the author of one of the most interesting blogs on the internet, Cold Takes . We discuss: * Are we living in the most important century? * Does he regret OpenPhil’s 30 million dollar grant to OpenAI in 2016? * How does he think about AI, progress, digital people, & ethics? Highly recommend! Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here . Timestamps (0:00:00) - Intro (0:00:58) - The Most Important Century (0:06:44) - The Weirdness of Our Time ( 0:21:20) - The Industrial Revolution (0:35:40) - AI Success Scenario (0:52:36) - Competition, Innovation , & AGI Bottlenecks (1:00:14) - Lock-in & Weak Points (1:06:04) - Predicting the Future (1:20:40) - Choosing Which Problem To Solve (1:26:56) - $30M OpenAI Investment (1:30:22) - Future Proof Ethics (1:37:28) - Integrity vs Utilitarianism (1:40:46) - Bayesian Mindset & Governance (1:46:56) - Career Advice Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Thu, December 29, 2022
Aarthi & Sriram - Twitter, 10x Engineers, & Marriage
I had fun chatting with Aarthi and Sriram . We discuss what it takes to be successful in technology, what Sriram would say if Elon tapped him to be the next CEO of Twitter, why more married couples don’t start businesses together, and how Aarthi hires and finds 10x engineers. Aarthi Ramamurthy and Sriram Krishnan are the hosts of The Good Times Show . They have had leading roles in several technology companies from Meta to Twitter to Netflix and have been founders and investors. Sriram is currently a general partner at a16z crypto and Aarthi is an angel investor. Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Timestamps (00:00:00) - Intro (00:01:19) - Married Couples Co-founding Businesses (00:09:53) - 10x Engineers (00:16:00) - 15 Minute Meetings (00:22:57) - a16z's Edge? (00:26:42) - Future of Twitter (00:30:58) - Is Big Tech Overstaffed? (00:38:37) - Next CEO of Twitter? (00:43:13) - Why Don't More Venture Capitalists Become Founders? (00:47:32) - Role of Boards (00:52:03) - Failing Upwards (00:56:00) - Underrated CEOs (01:02:18) - Founder Education (01:06:27) - What TV Show Would Sriram Make? (01:10:14) - Undervalued Founder Archetypes Transcript This transcript was autogenerated and thus may contain errors. [00:00:00] Aarthi: it's refreshing to have Elon come in and say, we are gonna work really hard. We are gonna be really hardcore about how we build things. [00:00:05] Dwarkesh: Let's say Elon and says Tomorrow, Sriram, would you be down to be the [00:00:08] Sriram: CEO of Twitter Absolutely not. Absolutely not. But I am married to someone. We [00:00:12] Aarthi: used to do overnights at Microsoft. Like we'd just sleep under our desk,, until the janitor would just , poke us out of there , I really need to vacuum your cubicle. Like, get out of here. There's such joy in , Finding those moments where you work hard and you're feeling really good about it. [00:00:25] Sriram: You'd be amazed at how many times Aarthi and I would have a conversation where be, oh, this algorithm thing. I remember designing it, and now we are on the other side We want to invest in something , where we think the team and the company is going to win and if they do win, there's huge value to be unlocked. [00:00:4
Wed, December 21, 2022
Bethany McLean - Enron, FTX, 2008, Musk, Frauds, & Visionaries
This was one of my favorite episodes ever. Bethany McLean was the first reporter to question Enron’s earnings, and she has written some of the best finance books out there. We discuss: * The astounding similarities between Enron & FTX, * How visionaries are just frauds who succeed (and which category describes Elon Musk), * What caused 2008, and whether we are headed for a new crisis, * Why there’s too many venture capitalists and not enough short sellers, * And why history keeps repeating itself. McLean is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair (see her articles here ) and the author of The Smartest Guys in the Room , All the Devils Are Here , Saudi America , and Shaky Ground . Watch on YouTube . Listen on Spotify , Apple Podcasts , or your favorite podcast platform. Follow McLean on Twitter . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Timestamps (0:04:37) - Is Fraud Over? (0:11:22) - Shortage of Shortsellers (0:19:03) - Elon Musk - Fraud or Visionary? (0:23:00) - Intelligence, Fake Deals, & Culture (0:33:40) - Rewarding Leaders for Long Term Thinking (0:37:00) - FTX Mafia? (0:40:17) - Is Finance Too Big? (0:44:09) - 2008 Collapse, Fannie & Freddie (0:49:25) - The Big Picture (1:00:12) - Frackers Vindicated? (1:03:40) - Rating Agencies (1:07:05) - Lawyers Getting Rich Off Fraud (1:15:09) - Are Some People Fundamentally Deceptive? (1:19:25) - Advice for Big Picture Thinkers Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Thu, December 15, 2022
Nadia Asparouhova - Tech Elites, Democracy, Open Source, & Philanthropy
Nadia Asparouhova is currently researching what the new tech elite will look like at nadia.xyz . She is also the author of Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software . We talk about how: * American philanthropy has changed from Rockefeller to Effective Altruism * SBF represented the Davos elite rather than the Silicon Valley elite, * Open source software reveals the limitations of democratic participation, * & much more. Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here . Timestamps (0:00:00) - Intro (0:00:26) - SBF was Davos elite (0:09:38) - Gender sociology of philanthropy (0:16:30) - Was Shakespeare an open source project? (0:22:00) - Need for charismatic leaders (0:33:55) - Political reform (0:40:30) - Why didn’t previous wealth booms lead to new philanthropic movements? (0:53:35) - Creating a 10,000 year endowment (0:57:27) - Why do institutions become left wing? (1:02:27) - Impact of billionaire intellectual funding (1:04:12) - Value of intellectuals (1:08:53) - Climate, AI, & Doomerism (1:18:04) - Religious philanthropy Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Mon, December 12, 2022
Aella - Sex, Psychedelics, & Enlightenment
Sex tips, porn revolutions, psychedelics, and enlightenment Aella writes at knowingless.com . Her posts and tweets provide a unique perspective about the data on sexual kinks and on being an escort & camgirl. In this episode, Aella talks about: * her escorting sex tips, * how tech will change pornography, * & whether trauma & enlightenment are real Enjoy! Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Timestamps Sex Tips - (0:00:21) Porn-tech Revolutions: Tiktokified Erotica? - (0:02:02) Trad Christian Life - (0:05:11) Can you be Naturally Talented at Enlightenment? (0:06:52) Camgirling, Escort Marketing, & Bulk deals - (0:09:15) Sex Work vs Student Loans - (0:13:25) Psychedelics and Deconstructive Suffering - (0:15:30) Aella’s Extreme Reading Addiction - (0:21:08) Radically Authentic People are Hot? - (0:27:29) Some Advice for Making Better Internet Polls - (0:39:32) Hanging out with Elites - (0:43:59) Is Trauma Fake? - (0:53:49) Spawning as a Woman and Being Extremely Weird - (1:07:19) Boring Podcast Conversations - (1:12:09) Transcript Transcript is autogenerated Dwarkesh Patel 0:00:00 Okay, today I have the pleasure of speaking with Ayela, who needs no introduction. Aella 0:00:07 So it’s Ayla. Is it actually? Yeah. Dwarkesh Patel 0:00:10 Okay, gotcha. The first question from Twitter from Nick Camerota. Aella 0:00:14 It’s about banging, right? Dwarkesh Patel 0:00:16 It’s right. Aella 0:00:17 Smashing. As one might do in the dirty. Dwarkesh Patel 0:00:21 I don’t see it here, but he was basically asking, there’s meditators who are experts, have all kinds of like special tips. He was talking about how they know how to hold their breath or close their eyes in a Aella 0:00:31 particular way. Dwarkesh Patel 0:00:32 What do escorts know about sex that the mediocre new doesn’t know? Aella 0:00:38 Well, I don’t know because like escorts don’t necessarily have more sex. They just have sex with different people. Like if you’re in a community relationship, you’re probably like becoming an expert at your partner. So it’s like, I guess like you’re an expert at like very quickly figuring out so like what a new partner likes. So it’s really depende
Thu, December 01, 2022
Byrne Hobart - FTX, Drugs, Twitter, Taiwan, & Monasticism
Perhaps the most interesting episode so far. Byrne Hobart writes at thediff.co , analyzing inflections in finance and tech. He explains: * What happened at FTX * How drugs have induced past financial bubbles * How to be long AI while hedging Taiwan invasion * Whether Musk’s Twitter takeover will succeed * Where to find the next Napoleon and LBJ * & ultimately how society can deal with those who seek domination and recognition Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Timestamps : (0:00:50) - What the hell happened at FTX? (0:07:03) - How SBF Faked Being a Genius: (0:12:23) - Drugs Explain Financial Bubbles (0:17:12) - On Founder Physiognomy (0:21:02) - Indexing Parental Involvement in Raising Talented Kids (0:30:35) - Where are all the Caro-level Biographers? (0:39:03) - Where are today's Great Founders? (0:48:29) - Micro Writing -> Macro Understanding (0:51:48) - Elon's Twitter Takeover (1:00:50) - Does Big Tech & West Have Great People? (1:11:34) - Philosophical Fanatics and Effective Altruism (1:17:17) - What Great Founders Have In Common (1:19:56) - Thinkers vs. Analyzers (1:25:40) - Taiwan Invasion bets & AI Timelines Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Mon, November 28, 2022
Edward Glaeser - Cities, Terrorism, Housing, & Remote Work
Edward Glaeser is the chair of the Harvard department of economics, and the author of the best books and papers about cities (including Survival of the City and Triumph of the City ). He explains why: * Cities are resilient to terrorism, remote work, & pandemics, * Silicon Valley may collapse but the Sunbelt will prosper, * Opioids show UBI is not a solution to AI * & much more! Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Timestamps (0:00:00) - Mars, Terrorism, & Capitals (0:06:32) - Decline, Population Collapse, & Young Men (0:14:44) - Urban Education (0:18:35) - Georgism, Robert Moses, & Too Much Democracy? (0:25:29) - Opioids, Automation, & UBI (0:29:57) - Remote Work, Taxation, & Metaverse (0:42:29) - Past & Future of Silicon Valley (0:48:56) - Housing Reform (0:52:32) - Europe’s Stagnation, Mumbai’s Safety, & Climate Change Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Tue, November 08, 2022
Kenneth T. Jackson - Robert Moses, Hero of New York?
I had a fascinating discussion about Robert Moses and The Power Broker with Professor Kenneth T. Jackson . He's the pre-eminent historian on NYC and author of Robert Moses and The Modern City: The Transformation of New York . He answers: * Why are we so much worse at building things today? * Would NYC be like Detroit without the master builder? * Does it take a tyrant to stop NIMBY? Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Timestamps (0:00:00) Preview + Intro (0:11:13) How Moses Gained Power (0:18:22) Moses Saved NYC? (0:27:31) Moses the Startup Founder? (0:32:34) The Case Against Moses Highways (0:50:30) NIMBYism (1:02:44) Is Progress Cyclical (1:11:13) Friendship with Caro (1:19:50) Moses the Longtermist? Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Thu, October 27, 2022
Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review
It was a pleasure to welcome Brian Potter on the podcast! Brian is the author of the excellent Construction Physics blog, where he discusses why the construction industry has been slow to industrialize and innovate. He explains why: Construction isn’t getting cheaper and faster, “Ugly” modern buildings are simply the result of better architecture, China is so great at building things, Saudi Arabia’s Line is a waste of resources, Environmental review makes new construction expensive and delayed and much much more! Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. You may also enjoy my interviews with Tyler Cowen (about talent, collapse, & pessimism of sex). Charles Mann (about the Americas before Columbus & scientific wizardry), and Austin Vernon about (Energy Superabundance, Starship Missiles, & Finding Alpha). Timestamps (0:00) - Why Saudi Arabia’s Line is Insane, Unrealistic, and Never going to Exist (06:54) - Designer Clothes & eBay Arbitrage Adventures (10:10) - Unique Woes of The Construction Industry (19:28) - The Problems of Prefabrication (26:27) - If Building Regulations didn’t exist… (32:20) - China’s Real Estate Bubble, Unbound Technocrats, & Japan (44:45) - Automation and Revolutionary Future Technologies (1:00:51) - 3D Printer Pessimism & The Rising Cost of Labour (1:08:02) - AI’s Impact on Construction Productivity (1:17:53) - Brian Dreams of Building a Mile High Skyscraper (1:23:43) - Deep Dive into Environmentalism and NEPA (1:42:04) - Software is Stealing Talent from Physical Engineering (1:47:13) - Gaps in the Blog Marketplace of Ideas (1:50:56) - Why is Modern Architecture So Ugly? (2:19:58) - Advice for Aspiring Architects and Young Construction Physicists Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Thu, October 20, 2022
Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues
It was a fantastic pleasure to welcome Bryan Caplan back for a third time on the podcast! His most recent book is Don't Be a Feminist: Essays on Genuine Justice . He explains why he thinks: - Feminists are mostly wrong, - We shouldn’t overtax our centi-billionaires, - Decolonization should have emphasized human rights over democracy, - Eastern Europe shows that we could accept millions of refugees. Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. More really cool guests coming up; subscribe to find out about future episodes! You may also enjoy my interviews with Tyler Cowen (about talent, collapse, & pessimism of sex), Charles Mann (about the Americas before Columbus & scientific wizardry), and Steve Hsu (about intelligence and embryo selection). Timestamps (00:12) - Don’t Be a Feminist (16:53) - Western Feminism Ignores Infanticide (19:59) - Why The Universe Hates Women (32:02) - Women's Tears Have Too Much Power (45:40) - Bryan Performs Standup Comedy! (51:02) - Affirmative Action is Philanthropic Propaganda (54:13) - Peer-effects as the Only Real Education (58:24) - The Idiocy of Student Loan Forgiveness (1:07:57) - Why Society is Becoming Mentally Ill (1:10:50) - Open Borders & the Ultra-long Term (1:14:37) - Why Cowen’s Talent Scouting Strategy is Ludicrous (1:22:06) - Surprising Immigration Victories (1:36:06) - The Most Successful Revolutions (1:54:20) - Anarcho-Capitalism is the Ultimate Government (1:55:40) - Billionaires Deserve their Wealth Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Wed, September 28, 2022
Tyler Cowen - Talent, Collapse, & Pessimism of Sex
It was my great pleasure to speak once again to Tyler Cowen. His most recent book is Talent, How to Find Energizers, Creatives, and Winners Across the World . We discuss: - how sex is more pessimistic than he is, - why he expects society to collapse permanently, - why humility, stimulants, & intelligence are overrated, - how he identifies talent, deceit, & ambition, - & much much much more! Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. You may also enjoy my interviews of Bryan Caplan (about mental illness, discrimination, and poverty), David Deutsch (about AI and the problems with America’s constitution), and Steve Hsu (about intelligence and embryo selection). Timestamps (0:00) -Did Caplan Change On Education? (1:17) - Travel vs. History (3:10) - Do Institutions Become Left Wing Over Time? (6:02) - What Does Talent Correlate With? (13:00) - Humility, Mental Illness, Caffeine, and Suits (19:20) - How does Education affect Talent? (24:34) - Scouting Talent (33:39) - Money, Deceit, and Emergent Ventures (37:16) - Building Writing Stamina (39:41) - When Does Intelligence Start to Matter? (43:51) - Spotting Talent (Counter)signals (53:30) - Will Reading Cowen’s Book Help You Win Emergent Ventures? (1:02:15) - Existential risks and the Longterm (1:10:41) - Cultivating Young Talent (1:16:58) - The Lifespans of Public Intellectuals (1:24:36) - Is Stagnation Inevitable? (1:30:30) - What are Podcasts for? Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Wed, September 28, 2022
Tyler Cowen - Talent, Collapse, & Sex
It was my great pleasure to speak once again to Tyler Cowen. His most recent book is Talent, How to Find Energizers, Creatives, and Winners Across the World . We discuss how sex is more pessimistic than he is, why he expects society to collapse permanently, why humility, stimulants, intelligence, & stimulants are overrated, how he identifies talent, deceit, & ambition, & much much much more! Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here . If you end up enjoying this episode, I would be super grateful if you shared it. Post it on Twitter, send it to your friends & group-chats, and throw it up on any relevant subreddits & forums you follow. Can’t exaggerate how much it helps a small podcast like mine. Timestamps (0:00) -Did Caplan Change On Education? (1:17) -Travel vs. History (3:10) -Do Institutions Become Left Wing Over Time? (6:02) -What Does Talent Correlate With? (13:00) -Humility, Mental Illness, Caffeine, and Suits (19:20) -How does Education affect Talent? (24:34) -Scouting Talent (33:39) -Money, Deceit, and Emergent Ventures (37:16) -Building Writing Stamina (39:41) -When Does Intelligence Start to Matter? (43:51) -Spotting Talent (Counter)signals (53:57) -Will Reading Cowen’s Book Help You Win Emergent Ventures? (1:04:18) -Existential risks and the Longterm (1:12:45) -Cultivating Young Talent (1:16:05) -The Lifespans of Public Intellectuals (1:19:42) Risk Aversion in Academia (1:26:20) -Is Stagnation Inevitable? (1:31:33) -What are Podcasts for? Did Caplan Change On Education? Tyler Cowen Ask Bryan about early and late Caplan. In which ways are they not consistent? That's a kind of friendly jab. Dwarkesh Patel Okay, interesting. Tyler Cowen Garrett Jones has tweeted about this in the past. In <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.amazon.com/Myth-Rational-Voter-Democracies-Policies/dp/0691138737
Wed, September 14, 2022
Charles C. Mann - Americas Before Columbus & Scientific Wizardry
Charles C. Mann is the author of three of my favorite history books: 1491 . 1493 , and The Wizard and the Prophet . We discuss: * why Native American civilizations collapsed and why they failed to make more technological progress * why he disagrees with Will MacAskill about longtermism * why there aren’t any successful slave revolts * how geoengineering can help us solve climate change * why Bitcoin is like the Chinese Silver Trade * and much much more! Timestamps (0:00:00) -Epidemically Alternate Realities (0:00:25) -Weak Points in Empires (0:03:28) -Slave Revolts (0:08:43) -Slavery Ban (0:12:46) - Contingency & The Pyramids (0:18:13) - Teotihuacan (0:20:02) - New Book Thesis (0:25:20) - Gender Ratios and Silicon Valley (0:31:15) - Technological Stupidity in the New World (0:41:24) - Religious Demoralization (0:43:24) - Critiques of Civilization Collapse Theories (0:48:29) - Virginia Company + Hubris (0:52:48) - China’s Silver Trade (1:02:27) - Wizards vs. Prophets (1:07:19) - In Defense of Regulatory Delays (1:11:50) -Geoengineering (1:16:15) -Finding New Wizards (1:18:10) -Agroforestry is Underrated (1:27:00) -Longtermism & Free Markets Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Thu, September 08, 2022
Austin Vernon - Energy Superabundance, Starship Missiles, & Finding Alpha
Austin Vernon is an engineer working on a new method for carbon capture, and he has one of the most interesting blogs on the internet, where he writes about engineering, software, economics, and investing. We discuss how energy superabundance will change the world, how Starship can be turned into a kinetic weapon, why nuclear is overrated, blockchains, batteries, flying cars, finding alpha, & much more! Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here . Follow Austin on Twitter . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Timestamps (0:00:00) - Intro (0:01:53) - Starship as a Weapon (0:19:24) - Software Productivity (0:41:40) - Car Manufacturing (0:57:39) - Carbon Capture (1:16:53) - Energy Superabundance (1:25:09) - Storage for Cheap Energy (1:31:25) - Travel in Future (1:33:27) - Future Cities (1:39:58) - Flying Cars (1:43:26) - Carbon Shortage (1:48:03) - Nuclear (2:12:44) - Solar (2:14:44) - Alpha & Efficient Markets (2:22:51) - Conclusion Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Tue, August 23, 2022
Steve Hsu - Intelligence, Embryo Selection, & The Future of Humanity
Steve Hsu is a Professor of Theoretical Physics at Michigan State University and cofounder of the company Genomic Prediction . We go deep into the weeds on how embryo selection can make babies healthier and smarter. Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here . Follow Steve on Twitter . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Timestamps (0:00:14) - Feynman’s advice on picking up women (0:11:46) - Embryo selection (0:24:19) - Why hasn't natural selection already optimized humans? (0:34:13) - Aging (0:43:18) - First Mover Advantage (0:53:38) - Genomics in dating (0:59:20) - Ancestral populations (1:07:07) - Is this eugenics? (1:15:08) - Tradeoffs to intelligence (1:24:25) - Consumer preferences (1:29:34) - Gwern (1:33:55) - Will parents matter? (1:44:45) - Wordcels and shape rotators (1:56:45) - Bezos and brilliant physicists (2:09:35) - Elite education Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Tue, August 09, 2022
Will MacAskill - Longtermism, Altruism, History, & Technology
Will MacAskill is one of the founders of the Effective Altruist movement and the author of the upcoming book, What We Owe The Future . We talk about improving the future, risk of extinction & collapse, technological & moral change, problems of academia, who changes history, and much more. Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Episode website + Transcript here . Follow Will on Twitter . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Subscribe to find out about future episodes! Timestamps (00:23) - Effective Altruism and Western values (07:47) - The contingency of technology (12:02) - Who changes history? (18:00) - Longtermist institutional reform (25:56) - Are companies longtermist? (28:57) - Living in an era of plasticity (34:52) - How good can the future be? (39:18) - Contra Tyler Cowen on what’s most important (45:36) - AI and the centralization of power (51:34) - The problems with academia Please share if you enjoyed this episode! Helps out a ton! Transcript Dwarkesh Patel 0:06 Okay, today I have the pleasure of interviewing William MacAskill . Will is one of the founders of the Effective Altruism movement, and most recently, the author of the upcoming book, What We Owe The Future . Will, thanks for coming on the podcast. Will MacAskill 0:20 Thanks so much for having me on. Effective Altruism and Western values Dwarkesh Patel 0:23 My first question is: What is the high-level explanation for the success of the Effective Altruism movement? Is it itself an example of the contingencies you talk about in the book? Will MacAskill 0:32 Yeah, I think it is contingent. Maybe not on the order of, “this would never have happened,” but at least on the order of decades. Evidence that Effective Altruism is somewhat contingent is that similar ideas have been promoted many times during history, and not taken on. We can go back to ancient China, the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Mohi
Wed, August 03, 2022
Joseph Carlsmith - Utopia, AI, & Infinite Ethics
Joseph Carlsmith is a senior research analyst at Open Philanthropy and a doctoral student in philosophy at the University of Oxford . We discuss utopia, artificial intelligence, computational power of the brain , infinite ethics , learning from the fact that you exist, perils of futurism, and blogging. Watch on YouTube . Listen on Spotify , Apple Podcasts , etc. Episode website + Transcript here . Follow Joseph on Twitter . Follow me on Twitter . Subscribe to find out about future episodes! Timestamps (0:00:06) - Introduction (0:02:53) - How to Define a Better Future? (0:09:19) - Utopia (0:25:12) - Robin Hanson’s EMs (0:27:35) - Human Computational Capacity (0:34:15) - FLOPS to Emulate Human Cognition? (0:40:15) - Infinite Ethics (1:00:51) - SIA vs SSA (1:17:53) - Futurism & Unreality (1:23:36) - Blogging & Productivity (1:28:43) - Book Recommendations (1:30:04) - Conclusion Please share if you enjoyed this episode! Helps out a ton! Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Wed, July 27, 2022
Fin Moorhouse - Longtermism, Space, & Entrepreneurship
Fin Moorhouse is a Research Scholar and assistant to Toby Ord at Oxford University's Future of Humanity Institute . He co-hosts the Hear This Idea podcast, which showcases new thinking in philosophy, the social sciences, and effective altruism . We discuss for-profit entrepreneurship for altruism, space governance, morality in the multiverse, podcasting, the long reflection, and the Effective Ideas & EA criticism blog prize. Watch on YouTube . Listen on Spotify , Apple Podcasts , etc. Episode website + Transcript here .Follow Fin on Twitter . Follow me on Twitter . Subscribe to find out about future episodes! Timestamps (0:00:10) - Introduction (0:02:45) - EA Prizes & Criticism (0:09:47) - Longtermism (0:12:52) - Improving Mental Models (0:20:50) - EA & Profit vs Nonprofit Entrepreneurship (0:30:46) - Backtesting EA (0:35:54) - EA Billionares (0:38:32) - EA Decisions & Many Worlds Interpretation (0:50:46) - EA Talent Search (0:52:38) - EA & Encouraging Youth (0:59:17) - Long Reflection (1:03:56) - Long Term Coordination (1:21:06) - On Podcasting (1:23:40) - Audiobooks Imitating Conversation (1:27:04) - Underappreciated Podcasting Skills (1:38:08) - Space Governance (1:42:09) - Space Safety & 1st Principles (1:46:44) - Von Neuman Probes (1:50:12) - Space Race & First Strike (1:51:45) - Space Colonization & AI (1:56:36) - Building a Startup (1:59:08) - What is EA Underrating? (2:10:07) - EA Career Steps (2:15:16) - Closing Remarks Please share if you enjoyed this episode! Helps out a ton! Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Tue, July 26, 2022
34: Will MacAskill - Longtermism, Altruism, History, & Technology
Will MacAskill is one of the founders of the Effective Altruist movement and the author of the upcoming book, What We Owe The Future . We talk about improving the future, risk of extinction & collapse, technological & moral change, problems of academia, who changes history, and much more. Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here . Follow Will on Twitter . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Timestamps (00:23) - Effective Altruism and Western values (07:47) - The contingency of technology (12:02) - Who changes history? (18:00) - Longtermist institutional reform (25:56) - Are companies longtermist? (28:57) - Living in an era of plasticity (34:52) - How good can the future be? (39:18) - Contra Tyler Cowen on what’s most important (45:36) - AI and the centralization of power (51:34) - The problems with academia This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.dwarkeshpatel.com
Wed, July 13, 2022
Alexander Mikaberidze - Napoleon, War, Progress, and Global Order
Alexander Mikaberidze is Professor of History at Louisiana State University and the author of The Napoleonic Wars: A Global History . He explains the global ramifications of the Napoleonic Wars - from India to Egypt to America. He also talks about how Napoleon was the last of the enlightened despots, whether he would have made a good startup founder, how the Napoleonic Wars accelerated the industrial revolution, the roots of the war in Ukraine, and much more! Watch on YouTube , or listen on Spotify , Apple Podcasts , or any other podcast platform. Episode website + Transcript here . Follow Professor Mikaberidze on Twitter . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Subscribe to find out about future episodes! Timestamps: (0:00:00) Alexander Mikaberidze - Professor of history and author of “The Napoleonic Wars” (0:01:19) - The allure of Napoleon (0:13:48) - The advantages of multiple colonies (0:27:33) - The Continental System and the industrial revolution (0:34:49) - Napoleon’s legacy. (0:50:38) - The impact of Napoleonic Wars (1:01:23) - Napoleon as a startup founder (1:14:02) The advantages of war and how it shaped international government and to some extent, political structures. Please share if you enjoyed this episode! Helps out a ton! Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Tue, July 05, 2022
Sam Bankman-Fried - Crypto, Altruism, and Leadership
I flew to the Bahamas to interview Sam Bankman-Fried , the CEO of FTX! He talks about FTX’s plan to infiltrate traditional finance, giving $100m this year to AI + pandemic risk, scaling slowly + hiring A-players, and much more. Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Episode website + Transcript here . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes Subscribe to find out about future episodes! Timestamps (00:18) - How inefficient is the world? (01:11) - Choosing a career (04:15) - The difficulty of being a founder (06:21) - Is effective altruism too narrowminded? (09:57) - Political giving (12:55) - FTX Future Fund (16:41) - Adverse selection in philanthropy (18:06) - Correlation between different causes (22:15) - Great founders do difficult things (25:51) - Pitcher fatigue and the importance of focus (28:30) - How SBF identifies talent (31:09) - Why scaling too fast kills companies (33:51) - The future of crypto (35:46) - Risk, efficiency, and human discretion in derivatives (41:00) - Jane Street vs FTX (41:56) - Conflict of interest between broker and exchange (42:59) - Bahamas and Charter Cities (43:47) - SBF’s RAM-skewed mind Unfortunately, audio quality abruptly drops from 17:50-19:15 Transcript Dwarkesh Patel 0:09 Today on The Lunar Science Society Podcast, I have the pleasure of interviewing Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of FTX . Thanks for coming on The Lunar Society. Sam Bankman-Fried 0:17 Thanks for having me. How inefficient is the world? Dwarkesh Patel 0:18 Alright, first question. Does the consecutive success of FTX and Alameda suggest to you that the world has all kinds of low-hanging opportunities? Or was that a property of the inefficiencies of crypto markets at one particular point in history? Sam Bankman-Fried 0:31 I think it's more
Thu, June 23, 2022
Agustin Lebron - Trading, Crypto, and Adverse Selection
Agustin Lebron began his career as a trader and researcher at Jane Street Capital, one of the largest market-making firms in the world. He currently runs the consulting firm Essilen Research, where he is dedicated to helping clients integrate modern decision-making approaches in their business. We discuss how AI will change finance, why adverse selection makes trading and hiring so difficult, & what the future of crypto holds. Watch on YouTube , or listen on Spotify , Apple Podcasts , or any other podcast platform. Episode website here . Buy The Laws of Trading . Follow Agustin on Twitter . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Subscribe to find out about future episodes! Timestamps: (00:00) - Introduction (04:18) - What happens in adverse selection? (09:22) - Why is having domain expertise in trading not important? (15:09) - How do you deal when you're on the other side of the adverse selection? (21:16) - Why you should invest in training your people? (25:37) - Is finance too big at 9% of GDP? (31:06) - Trading is very labor intensive (36:16) - Overlap of rationality community and trading (48:00) - The age of startup founders (50:43) - The role of market makers in crypto (57:31) - Three books that you recommend (58:47) - Life is long, not short (1:03:01) - Short history of Lunar Society Please share if you enjoyed this episode! Helps out a ton! Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Tue, May 24, 2022
Luke Burgis - Mimesis, Scapegoats, and Revolutions
Luke Burg is currently an Entrepreneur-in-Residence and Director of Programs at the Ciocca Center for Principled Entrepreneurship. We talk about his book " Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life ". Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Episode website + transcript here . Follow Luke on Twitter , LinkedIn & Instagram . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. More about Luke on his Website Timestamps: (0:00:00) - Introduction (0:00:52) - Why do human beings seem to be so concerned with what other people want and why they are conformist? (0:04:17) - The functional value of sacrificing (0:16:21) - Is mimetic theory falsifiable? (0:28:06) - Why do some institutions rub out the differences between people and why do some accentuate them? (0:37:22) - Why sacrifice doesn't work well in the modern world? (0:45:54) - Naming our immediate models positive and negative is an important sort of exercise and awareness to do Get full access to The Lunar Society at www.dwarkeshpatel.com/subscribe
Wed, May 18, 2022
Visakan Veerasamy - Singapore, Talent, & History
Visakan Virasamy is an eccentric Singaporean who weaves together of sparkling web of insight, wit, and positivity throughout the world of twitter. He was part of the early marketing team at ReferralCandy, and a cofounder of Statement.sg , a Singaporean ecommerce t-shirt brand. He is best known for his prolific, labyrinthe twitter threads, and is the author of Friendly Ambitious Nerd and Introspect . Visa can usually be found rambling on Twitter or on his Youtube channel about the radical power of intentionally making friends, building communities, encouraging scenes of creativity, and how we might be able to bring forth a global golden age of collaboration in our lifetime. Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Episode website + transcript here . Follow Visa on Twitter . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Thanks for reading The Lunar Society! Subscribe to find out about future episodes! Timestamps: (0:00:00) - Visakan Virasamy - Introduction (0:02:29) - Connecting People (0:07:09) - Always hungry for thoughtful engagement (0:13:23) - Raising ambitions (0:24:47) - Singapore after the World War II (0:31:39) - Is Singapore big enough to be the next intellectual hub? (0:41:11) - Singapore is exactly the kind of place that could integrate other populations (0:56:32) - Things that have the biggest impact on people’s lives. (1:16:44) - If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. (1:33:46) - Most people don't experience being truly overwhelmed (1:43:25) - Trusting people who screwed up more Get full access to The Lunar Society at www.dwarkeshpatel.com/subscribe
Wed, May 11, 2022
Ananyo Bhattacharya - John von Neumann, Jewish Genius, and Nuclear War
Ananyo Bhattacharya is the author of The Man from the Future: The Visionary Life of John von Neumann . He is a science writer who has worked at the Economist and Nature. Before journalism, he was a medical researcher at the Burnham Institute in San Diego, California. He holds a degree in physics from the University of Oxford and a PhD in protein crystallography from Imperial College London. Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Episode website here . Follow Ananyo on Twitter . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Timestamps: (0:00:30) - John Von Neumann - The Man From The Future (0:02:29) - The Forgotten Father of Game Theory (0:16:04) - The last representative of the great mathematicians (0:19:45) - Did John Von Neumann have a Miracle year? (0:26:31) - The fundamental theorem of John von Neumann’s game theory (0:29:34) - The strong supporter of "Preventive War” (0:50:51) - We can't all be superhuman Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Thu, May 05, 2022
Stephen Grugett (Manifold Markets Founder) - Predictions Markets & Revolutionizing Governance
Stephen Grugett is a cofounder of Manifold Markets, where anyone can create a prediction market. We discuss how prediction markets can change how countries and companies make important decisions. Manifold Markets : https://manifold.markets/ Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Episode website here . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Timestamps: (0:00:00) - Introduction (0:02:29) - Predicting the future (0:05:16) - Getting Accurate Information (0:06:20) - Potentials (0:09:29) - Not using internal prediction markets (0:11:04) - Doing the painful thing (0:13:31) - Decision Making Process (0:14:52) - Grugett’s opinion about insider trading (0:16:23) - The Role of prediction market (0:18:17) - Dealing with the Speculators (0:20:33) - Criticism of Prediction Markets (0:22:24) - The world when people cared about prediction markets (0:26:10) - Grugett’s Profile Background/Experience (0:28:49) - User Result Market (0:30:17) - The most important mechanism (0:32:59) - The 1000 manifold dollars (0:40:30) - Efficient financial markets (0:46:28) - Manifold Markets Job/Career Openings (0:48:02) - Objectives of Manifold Markets Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Wed, April 27, 2022
Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World
Today I talk to Pradyu Prasad (blogger and podcaster) about the book "Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan" by Herbert P. Bix. We also discuss militarization, industrial capacity, current events, and blogging. Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Podcast website here . Follow Pradyu on Twitter . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Follow Pradyu's Blog: https://brettongoods.substack.com/ Timestamps: (0:00:00) - Intro (0:01:59) - Hirohito and Introduction to the Book (0:05:39) - Meiji Restoration and Japan's Rapid Industrialization (0:11:11) - Industrialization and Traditional Military Norms (0:14:50) - Alternate Causes for Japanese Atrocities Richard Hanania's Public Choice Theory in Imperial Japan (0:17:03) (0:21:34) - Hirohito's Relationship with the Military (0:24:33) - Rant of Japanese Strategy (0:33:10) - Modern Parallel to Russia/Ukraine (0:38:22) - Economics of War and Western War Capacity (0:48:14) - Elements of Effective Occupation (0:55:53) - Ideological Fervor in WW2 Japan (0:59:25) - Cynicism on Elites (1:00:29) - The Legend of Godlike Hirohito (1:06:47) - Postwar Japanese Economy (1:13:23) - Blogging and Podcasting (1:20:31) - Spooky (1:38:00) - Outro Please share if you enjoyed this episode! Helps out a ton! Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
S1 E26 · Wed, April 27, 2022
26: Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World
Today I talk to Pradyu Prasad (blogger and podcaster) about the book "Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan" by Herbert P. Bix. We also discuss militarization, industrial capacity, current events, and blogging. Get the Book: https://www.amazon.com/Hirohito-Making-Modern-Japan-Herbert/dp/0060931302 Watch on Youtube: https://youtu.be/xNSUxtBttIg Follow Pradyu's Blog: https://brettongoods.substack.com/ Follow Pradyu on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PradyuPrasad Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/dwarkesh_sp Timestamps: (0:00:00) - Intro (0:01:59) - Hirohito and Introduction to the Book (0:05:39) - Meiji Restoration and Japan's Rapid Industrialization (0:11:11) - Industrialization and Traditional Military Norms (0:14:50) - Alternate Causes for Japanese Atrocities Richard Hanania's Public Choice Theory in Imperial Japan (0:17:03) (0:21:34) - Hirohito's Relationship with the Military (0:24:33) - Rant of Japanese Strategy (0:33:10) - Modern Parallel to Russia/Ukraine (0:38:22) - Economics of War and Western War Capacity (0:48:14) - Elements of Effective Occupation (0:55:53) - Ideological Fervor in WW2 Japan (0:59:25) - Cynicism on Elites (1:00:29) - The Legend of Godlike Hirohito (1:06:47) - Postwar Japanese Economy (1:13:23) - Blogging and Podcasting (1:20:48) - Dwarkesh's Secret Sauce and a Spooky Premonition (1:38:15) - Outro
S1 E25 · Thu, April 21, 2022
25: Razib Khan - Genomics, Intelligence, and The Church of Science
Razib Khan is a writer, geneticist, and blogger with an interest in history, genetics, culture, and evolutionary psychology. Watch on Youtube: https://youtu.be/sh04dEtBAoE Follow Razib on Twitter: https://twitter.com/razibkhan Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/dwarkesh_sp Time Stamps (0:00:05) Razib's Background (0:01:34) Dysgenics of Intelligence (0:04:23) Endogamy and Genetic traits in India (0:08:58) Similar Examples of Endogamy (0:14:28) Why So Many Brahmin CEO's (0:19:55) Razib the Globe Trotter, Geography Expert (0:25:04) Male/Female Genetic Variance (0:30:04) Agricultural Man and Our Tiny Brains (0:34:40) The Church of Science (0:42:33) Professorship, a family business (0:44:23) Long History (0:52:42) Future of Human Computer Interfacing (0:56:30) Near Future of Gene Editing (0:59:19) Meta Questions and Closing
Wed, April 20, 2022
Razib Khan - Genomics, Intelligence, and The Church of Science
Razib Khan is a writer, geneticist, and blogger with an interest in history, genetics, culture, and evolutionary psychology. Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Podcast website here .Follow Razib on Twitter . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes Thanks for reading The Lunar Society! Subscribe to find out about future episodes! Time Stamps (0:00:05) Razib's Background (0:01:34) Dysgenics of Intelligence (0:04:23) Endogamy and Genetic traits in India (0:08:58) Similar Examples of Endogamy (0:14:28) Why So Many Brahmin CEOs (0:19:55) Razib the Globe Trotter, Geography Expert (0:25:04) Male/Female Genetic Variance (0:30:04) Agricultural Man and Our Tiny Brains (0:34:40) The Church of Science (0:42:33) Professorship, a family business (0:44:23) Long History (0:52:42) Future of Human-Computer Interfacing (0:56:30) Near Future of Gene Editing (0:59:19) Meta Questions and Closing Please share if you enjoyed this episode! Helps out a ton! Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Sat, April 16, 2022
Jimmy Soni - Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and the Paypal Mafia
Jimmy Soni is the author of The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley. Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Episode website here . Follow Jimmy on Twitter . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes! Timestamps: (0:00:00) - Bell Labs vs PayPal (0:05:12) - Scenius in Ancient Rome and America's Founding (0:07:02) - Girard at PayPal (0:15:17) - Thiel almost shorts the Dot com bubble (0:19:49) - Does Zero to One contradict PayPal's story? (0:27:57) - Hilarious Russian hacker story (0:29:06) - Why is Thiel so good at spotting talent? (0:34:50) - Did PayPal make talent or discover it? (0:40:40) - Japanese mafia invests in PayPal?! (0:44:42) - Upcoming TV show on PayPal (0:48:11) - Musk in ancient Rome (0:52:12) - Why didn't Musk keep pursuing finance? (0:56:32) - Why didn't the mafia get back together? (1:00:06) - Jimmy's writing process Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Tue, April 12, 2022
Bryan Caplan - Discrimination, Poverty, & Mental Illness
I interview the economist Bryan Caplan about his new book, Labor Econ Versus the World , and many other related topics. Bryan Caplan is a Professor of Economics at George Mason University and a New York Times Bestselling author. His most famous works include: The Myth of the Rational Voter , Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids , The Case Against Education , and Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration . Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Podcast website here . Follow Bryan on Twitter . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Timestamps: (0:00:00) - Intro (0:00:33) - How many workers are useless, and why is labor force participation so low? (0:03:47) - Is getting out of poverty harder than we think? (0:10:43) - Are elites to blame for poverty? (0:14:56) - Is human nature to blame for poverty? (0:19:11) - Remote work and foreign wages (0:24:43) - The future of the education system? (0:29:31) - Do employers care about the difficulty of a curriculum? (0:33:13) - Why do companies and colleges discriminate against Asians? (0:42:01) - Applying Hanania's unitary actor model to mental health (0:50:38) - Why are multinationals so effective? (0:53:37) - Open borders and cultural norms (0:58:13) - Is Tyler Cowen right about automation? </p
Thu, February 24, 2022
Richard Hanania - Foreign Policy, Fertility, and Wokeness
Richard Hanania is the President of the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology and the author of Public Choice Theory and the Illusion of Grand Strategy: How Generals, Weapons Manufacturers, and Foreign Governments Shape American Foreign Policy. Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Episode website here . Follow Richard on Twitter . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Read Richard's Substack: https://richardhanania.substack.com/ Timestamps: (0:00:00) - Intro (0:04:35) - Did war prevent sclerosis? (0:06:05) - China vs America's grand strategy (0:10:00) - Does the president have more power over foreign policy? (0:11:30) - How to deter bad actors? (0:15:39) - Do some countries have a coherent foreign policy? (0:16:55) - Why does self-interest matter in foreign but not domestic policy? (0:21:05) - Should we limit money in politics? (0:23:47) - Should we credit expertise for nuclear detante and global prosperity? (0:28:45) - Have international alliances made us safer? (0:31:57) - Why does academic bueracracy work in some fields? (0:36:26) - Did academia suck even before diversity? (0:39:34) - How do we get expertise in social sciences? (0:42:19) - Why are things more liberal? (0:43:55) - Why is big tech so liberal? (0:47:53) - Authoritarian populism vs libertarianism (0:51:40) - Can authoritarian governments increase fertility? (0:54:54) - Will increasing fertility be dysgenic? (0:56:43) - Will not having kids become cool? (0:59:22) -Advice for libertarians? Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Mon, January 31, 2022
David Deutsch - AI, America, Fun, & Bayes
David Deutsch is the founder of the field of quantum computing and the author The Beginning of Infinity and The Fabric of Reality . Read me contra David on AI . Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript with helpful links here . Follow David on Twitter . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future podcasts. Timestamps (0:00:00) - Will AIs be smarter than humans? (0:06:34) - Are intelligence differences immutable / heritable? (0:20:13) - IQ correletation of twins seperated at birth (0:27:12) - Do animals have bounded creativity? (0:33:32) - How powerful can narrow AIs be? (0:36:59) - Could you implant thoughts in VR? (0:38:49) - Can you simulate the whole universe? (0:41:23) - Are some interesting problems insoluble? (0:44:59) - Does America fail Popper's Criterion? (0:50:01) - Does finite matter mean there's no beginning of infinity? (0:53:16) - The Great Stagnation (0:55:34) - Changes in epistemic status is Popperianism (0:59:29) - Open ended science vs gain of function (1:02:54) - Contra Tyler Cowen on civilizational lifespan (1:07:20) - Fun criterion (1:14:16) - Does AGI through evolution require suffering? (1:18:01) - Would David enter the Experience Machine? (1:20:09) - (Against) Advice for young people Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Mon, January 10, 2022
Samo Burja - Founders, Markets, & Collapse
Samo Burja is the founder of Bismarck Analysis and a Research Fellow at the Long Now Foundation. Samo writes and speaks about history, institutions, and strategy, and he is the creator of the Great Founder Theory of history. Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Episode website here . Follow Samo's Twitter. Follow my twitter for updates on future episodes. Subscribe to Bismarck Brief: https://brief.bismarckanalysis.com/ Thanks for reading The Lunar Society! Subscribe to find out about future episodes! Timestamps: (0:00:00) - Intro (0:00:17) - Are individuals causally responsible for history? (0:04:34) - Was Napoleon a great founder? (0:08:47) - What can great founder theory predict? (0:11:17) - How many live players are there? (0:15:40) - Is the market full of live players? (0:18:37) - How to cozy up to both sides? (0:22:58) - How do you become an intellectual? (0:27:34) - Aligning incentives for intellectuals (0:30:40) - What makes someone a great founder? (0:39:29) - Why is the centralized internet inevitable? (0:42:21) - Samo and I debate odds of civilizational collapse (0:48:17) - Is GDP fake? (0:56:52) - The world only has 1.5 civilizations (0:59:32) - Advice to effective altruists (1:02:30) - Advice to young people Get full access to The Lunar Society at www.dwarkeshpatel.com/subscribe
Mon, January 03, 2022
Discussing Where's My Flying Car w/ Rohit Krishnan
Rohit Krishnan is a venture capitalist who writes about "the strange loops underlying our systems of innovation" at https://www.strangeloopcanon.com. We discussed J. Storrs. Hall's book Where Is My Flying Car? Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Episode website + transcript here . Relevant essays from Rohit: Review of Where Is My Flying Car The Small Successes Of Nanotech Isolated Narratives of Progress Meditations On Regulations Follow Rohit's Twitter. Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Timestamps: (00:00) - Why don't we have flying cars? (08:09) - Should we expect exponential growth? (18:13) - Machiavelli Effect and centralization of science funding (27:55) - We need more science fiction (32:40) - The return of citizen science? (37:40) - Have we grown too comfortable for progress? (42:15) - Is India the future of innovation? (47:15) - Is there an upper-income trap? (50:30) - Forecasts for technologies Timestamps: 00:00 Why don't we have flying cars? 08:09 Should we expect exponential growth? 18:13 Machiavelli Effect and centralization of science funding 27:55 We need more science fiction 32:40 The return of citizen science? 37:40 Have we grown too comfortable for progress? 42:15 Is India the future of innovation? 47:15 Is there an upper-income trap? 50:30 Forecasts for technologies Get full access to The Lunar Society at <a href="https://www.dwark
Tue, October 05, 2021
Byrne Hobart - Optionality, Stagnation, and Secret Societies
Byrne Hobart writes The Diff, a newsletter about inflections in finance and technology with 24,000+ subscribers. Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Episode website here . The Diff newsletter: https://diff.substack.com/ Follow Byrne on Twitter . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes! Thanks for reading The Lunar Society! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Timestamps: ( 0:00:00 ) - Byrne's one big idea: stagnation ( 0:05:50 ) -Has regulation caused stagnation? ( 0:14:00 ) - FDA retribution ( 0:15:15 ) - Embryo selection ( 0:17:32 ) - Patient longtermism ( 0:21:02 ) - Are there secret societies? ( 0:26:53 ) - College, optionality, and conformity ( 0:34:40 ) - Differentiated credentiations underrated? (<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollo
Tue, September 28, 2021
Roger's Bacon - Using Cults to Power Science
Roger's Bacon is a pseudonymous blogger and the creator of the new Seeds of Science journal. Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Seeds of Science: https://www.theseedsofscience.org/ Roger's Bacon blog: https://rogersbacon.substack.com/ Follow Roger's Bacon Twitter . Follow me on Twitter for more updates. Timestamps (0:00:05) - Who is Roger's Bacon? (0:05:03) - The need for scientific diversity (0:10:50) - Why are our institutions so homogenous? (0:19:35) - In defense of cults (0:24:05) - Does innovation require isolation? (0:32:16) - Diversity of institutions vs individuals (0:36:05) - Can we create weird secret societies? (0:42:40) - Secret longtermists and pseudonymous thinkers (0:46:50) - Science needs religion (0:54:50) - How contingent is science (0:59:05) - Seeds of Science (1:09:50) - Randomness in science (1:14:55) - Why committees suck (1:21:05) - Resetting institutions and reinventing ideas (1:32:30) - Teaching at a STEM high school (1:53:01) - Big picture thinking vs technical skills (1:58:55) - Finding blindspots (2:01:57) - Being realistic about the far future Get full access to The Lunar Society at www.dwarkeshpatel.com/subscribe
Mon, August 09, 2021
David Friedman - Dating Markets, Legal Systems, Bitcoin, and Automation
David Friedman is a famous anarcho-capitalist economist and legal scholar. Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Episode website + transcript here . David Friedman's website: http://www.daviddfriedman.com/ Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Timestamps: ( 0:00:00 ) - Dating market ( 0:12:15 ) - The future of reputation ( 0:27:30 ) - How Friedman predicted bitcoin ( 0:35:35 ) - Prediction markets ( 0:40:00 ) - Can regulation stop progress globally? ( 0:45:50 ) - Lack of diversity in modern legal systems ( 0:54:20 ) - Friedman's theory of property rights ( 1:01:50 ) - Charles Murray's scheme to fight regulations ( 1:06:25 ) -Property rights of the poor (<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3svashDg
Fri, June 04, 2021
Sarah Fitz-Claridge - Taking Children Seriously
Sarah Fitz-Claridge is a writer, coach, and speaker with a fallibilist worldview. She started the journal that became Taking Children Seriously in the early 1990s after being surprised by the heated audience reactions she was getting when talking about children. She has spoken all over the world about her educational philosophy, and you can find transcripts of some of her talks on her website. Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Episode website here . Sarah's Website: https://www.fitz-claridge.com/ Follow Sarah on Twitter . Follow me on Twitter for updates. Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Fri, May 28, 2021
Michael Huemer - Anarchy, Capitalism, and Progress
Michael Huemer is a professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado. He is the author of more than sixty academic articles in epistemology, ethics, metaethics, metaphysics, and political philosophy, as well as eight amazing books. Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Podcast website here . Buy Knowledge, Reality, and Value and The Problem of Political Authority . Read Michael’s awesome blog and follow me on Twitter for new episodes. Timestamps: (0:00:00) - Intro (0:01:07) - The Problem of Political Authority (0:03:25) - Common sense ethics (0:09:39) - Stockholm syndrome and the charisma of power (0:18:14) - Moral progress (0:26:55) - Growth of libertarian ideas (0:33:37) - Does anarchy increase violence? (0:44:37) - Transitioning to anarchy (0:47:20) - Is Huemer attacking our society?! (0:51:40) - Huemer's writing process (0:53:18) - Is it okay to work for the government (0:56:39) - Burkean argument against anarchy (1:02:07) - The case for tyranny (1:11:58) - Underrated/overrated (1:25:55) - Huemer production function (1:30:41) - Favorite books (1:33:04) - Advice for young people Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Sat, November 28, 2020
Uncle Bob - The Long Reach of Code
Robert Martin (aka Uncle Bob) is a programming pioneer and bestselling author or Clean Code. We discuss the prospect of automating programming, spotting and developing coding talent, occupational licensing, quotas, and the elusive sense of style. Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Listen to his fascinating talk on the future of programming: https://youtu.be/ecIWPzGEbFc Read his blog about programming: http://blog.cleancoder.com/ Buy his books on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/kindle-dbs/ent... Thanks for reading The Lunar Society! Subscribe to find out about future episodes! Timestamps ( 0:00 ) - Automating programming ( 8:40 ) - Educating programmers (expertise, talent, university) ( 21:45 ) - Spotting talent ( 26:10 ) - Teaching kids ( 29:31 ) - Pro
Fri, November 20, 2020
Scott Aaronson - Quantum Computing, Complexity, and Creativity
Scott Aaronson is a Professor of Computer Science at The University of Texas at Austin, and director of its Quantum Information Center. He's the author of one of the most interesting blogs on the internet: https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/ and the book “ Quantum Computing since Democritus”. He was also my professor for a class on quantum computing. Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Episode website here . Follow me on Twitter to get updates on future episodes and guests. Timestamps (0:00) - Intro (0:33) - Journey through high school and college (12:37) - Early work (19:15) - Why quantum computing took so long (33:30) - Contributions from outside academia (38:18) - Busy beaver function (53:50) - New quantum algorithms (1:03:30) - Clusters (1:06:23) - Complexity and economics (1:13:26) - Creativity (1:24:07) - Advice to young people Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Mon, November 16, 2020
Scott Young - Ultralearning
Scott is the author of Ultralearning and famous for the MIT Challenge, where he taught himself MIT's 4 year Computer Science curriculum in 1 year. I had a blast chatting with Scott Young about aggressive self-directed learning. Scott has some of the best advice out there about learning hard things. It has helped yours truly prepare to interview experts and dig into interesting subjects. Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Podcast website here . Check out Scott’s website . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Buy Scott’s book on Ultralearning: https://amzn.to/3TuPEbf Timestamps (00:00) - Intro (01:00) - Einstein (13:20) - Age (18:00) - Transfer (24:40) - Compounding (34:00) - Depth vs context (40:50) - MIT challenge (1:00:50) - Focus (1:10:00) - Role models (1:20:30) - Progress studies (1:24:25) - Early work and ambition (1:28:18) - Advice for 20 yr old (1:35:00) - Raising a genius baby? Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Wed, October 28, 2020
Charles Murray - Human Accomplishment and the Future of Liberty
I ask Charles Murray about Human Accomplishment , By The People , and The Curmudgeon's Guide to Getting Ahead . Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here . Follow Charles on Twitter . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Timestamps (00:00) - Intro (01:00) - Writing Human Accomplishment (06:30) - The Lotka curve, age, and miracle years (10:38) - Habits of the greats (hard work) (15:22) - Focus and explore in your 20s (19:57) - Living in Thailand (23:02) - Peace, wealth, and golden ages (26:02) - East, west, and religion (30:38) - Christianity and the Enlightenment (34:44) - Institutional sclerosis (37:43) - Antonine Rome, decadence, and declining accomplishment (42:13) - Crisis in social science (45:40) - Can secular humanism win? (55:00) - Future of Christianity (1:03:30) - Liberty and accomplishment (1:06:08) - By the People (1:11:17) - American exceptionalism (1:14:49) - Pessimism about reform (1:18:43) - Can libertarianism be resuscitated? (1:25:18) - Trump's deregulation and judicial nominations (1:28:11) - Beating the federal government (1:32:05) - Why don't big companies have a litigation fund? (1:34:05) - Getting around the Halo effect (1:36:07) - What happened to the Madison fund? (1:37:00) - Future of liberty (1:41:00) - Public sector unions (1:43:43) - Andrew Yang and UBI (1:44:36) - Groundhog Day (1:47:05) - Getting noticed as a young person (1:50:48) - Passage from Human Accomplishment Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at <a href="ht
Mon, October 19, 2020
Alex Tabarrok - Prizes, Prices, and Public Goods
Alex Tabarrok is a professor of economics at George Mason University and with Tyler Cowen a founder of the online education platform http://MRU.org. I ask Alex Tabarrok about the Grand Innovation Prize, the Baumol effect, and Dominant Assurance Contracts. Watch on YouTube , or listen on Spotify , Apple Podcasts , or any other podcast platform. Episode website here . Follow Alex on Twitter . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Alex Tabarrok's and Tyler Cowen's excellent blog: https://marginalrevolution.com/ Thanks for reading The Lunar Society! Subscribe to find out about future episodes! Timestamps: ( 00:00 ) - Intro ( 00:34 ) - Grand Innovation Prize ( 08:45 ) - Prizes vs grants ( 14:10 ) -Baumol effect ( 27:50 ) - On Bryan Caplan's case against education ( 31:35 ) - Scaling education online ( 48:50 ) - Declining research productivity (<a target="_blank" rel="noo
Fri, September 04, 2020
Caleb Watney - America's Innovation Engine
Caleb Watney is the director of innovation policy at the Progressive Policy Institute. Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Episode website here . Follow Caleb on Twitter . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Caleb's new blog: https://www.agglomerations.tech/ Timestamps (00:00) - Intro ( 00:20 ) - America's innovation engine is slowing ( 01:02 ) - Remote work/ agglomeration effects ( 08:45 ) - Chinese vs American innovation ( 16:23 ) - Reforming institutions ( 19:00 ) - Tom Cotton's critique of high skilled Immigration ( 22:26 ) - Eric Weinstein's critique of high skilled Immigration ( 26:02 ) - Reforming H1-B ( 30:30 ) - Immigration during recession ( 32:55 ) - Big tech / AI (<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer
Mon, August 31, 2020
Robin Hanson - The Long View
Robin Hanson is a professor of economics at George Mason University. He is the author of The Elephant in the Brain and The Age of Em. Robin's Twitter: https://twitter.com/robinhanson Robin's blog: https://www.overcomingbias.com/ Robin's website: http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/home.html My blog: https://dwarkeshpatel.com/ My Twitter: https://twitter.com/dwarkesh_sp 00:05 The long view 15:07 Subconscious vs conscious intelligence 20:28 Meditators 26:50 Signaling, norms, and motives 36:50 Conversation 42:54 2020 election nominees <a href="h
Tue, August 25, 2020
Jason Crawford - The Roots of Progress
Jason Crawford writes at The Roots of Progress about the history of technology and industry and the philosophy of progress. Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Podcast website here . Follow Jason on Twitter . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Jason's website: https://jasoncrawford.org/ The Roots of Progress: https://rootsofprogress.org/ Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Sat, August 22, 2020
Matjaž Leonardis - Science, Identity, and Probability
Matjaž Leonardis has co-written a paper with David Deutsch about the Popper-Miller Theorem. In this episode, we talk about that as well as the dangers of the scientific identity, the nature of scientific progress, and advice for young people who want to be polymaths. Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Podcast website here. Follow Matjaž's excellent Twitter . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes! Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Fri, July 10, 2020
Tyler Cowen - The Great Reset
Tyler Cowen is Holbert L. Harris Professor of Economics at George Mason University and also Director of the Mercatus Center. Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Transcript + Podcast website here. Follow Tyler Cowen on Twitter . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Timestamps (0:00) - The Great Reset (2:58) - Growth and the cyclical view of history (4:00) - Time horizons, growth, and sustainability (5:30) - Space travel (8:11) - WMDs and end of humanity (10:57) - Common sense morality (12:20) - China and authoritarianism (13:45) - Are big businesses complacent? (17:15) - Online education vs university (20:45) - Aesthetic decline in West Virginia (23:20) - Advice for young people (25:18) - Mentors (27:15) - Identifying talent (29:50) - Can adults change? (31:45) - Capacity to change men vs women (33:10 ) - Are effeminate societies better? (35:15) - Conservatives and progress (36:50) - Biggest mistake in history (39:05) - Nuke in my lifetime (40:35) - Age and learning (42:45) - Pessimistic future (43:50) - Optimistic future (46:28) - Closing Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Fri, June 12, 2020
Paul Frazee (Creator of BeakerBrowser) - Building the Future of the Web
Paul Frazee is the cocreator of BeakerBrowser, where they're pursuing the ambitious goal of creating a decentralized Internet with a new peer-to-peer browser. In this conversation, we discussed how BeakerBrowser is going to affect privacy, misinformation, government censorship, and innovation on the Internet + he gave some great advice for young people interested in software! Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Podcast website here . Follow Paul on Twitter . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Download Beaker: beakerbrowser.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.dwarkeshpatel.com
Tue, June 09, 2020
Charlie Jungheim (aka Hermes of Reason) - Reason and Emotion
Charlie Jungheim (aka. Hermes of Reason) makes really awesome and funny YouTube videos about Popperian and Deutschian philosophy. In this episode, we talk about about inexplicit and explicit ideas, the link between reason and meditation, our political and emotional responses to COVID, and Black Lives Matter. Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Podcast website here . Follow Charlie on YouTube and Twitter . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.dwarkeshpatel.com
Fri, May 22, 2020
Bryan Caplan - Nurturing Orphaned Ideas
Bryan Caplan is a Professor of Economics at George Mason University and a New York Times Bestselling author. His most famous works include: The Myth of the Rational Voter , Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids , The Case Against Education , and Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration . I talk to Bryan about open borders, the idea trap, UBI, appeasement, China, the education system, and Bryan Caplan's next two books on poverty and housing regulation. Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Follow Bryan on Twitter . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
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