CSPI Podcast

Eric Kaufmann is a research fellow at CSPI and a professor of politics at the University of Buckingham. He joins the podcast to talk about his new book, Taboo: How Making Race Sacred Produced a Cultural Revolution. Eric explains its thesis, which holds that the taboos around race that arose in the 1960s expanded into other areas of life and eventually led to modern wokeness. He and Richard debate the plausibility of this idea, its similarities and differences with those put forth in The Origins of Woke, and what kind of policy responses might be appropriate to stem and ultimately reverse undesirable cultural trends. The conversation ends with some discussion about free speech in academia, and why Eric decided to leave his old university and start teaching at the University of Buckingham.

Bess Stillman (email) is a doctor at the Mayo Clinic and writes at Everything Is An Emergency. She is also an excellent storyteller who uses her skills to convey the hectic and at times heart wrenching experiences one faces as an ER doctor. Bess is married to Jake Seliger, who in 2022 was diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma. She has written a three-part series about the struggles that she and Jake have faced getting him into clinical trials. On the podcast, Bess describes the maddening and cruelly irrational processes that dying patients must go through in order to find access to treatments that might help them. The conversation covers the nightmare of dealing with ClinicalTrials.gov, the requirement that an individual travel across state lines to even know if they are eligible for a trial, and how the government continues to exercise paternalism on the behalf of patients who have no other options other than to take a drug that has not yet been proven to work. Bess also discusses policy ideas she would like to see implemented, and finally shares some stories from her time as an ER doctor.

The themes touched on here will be familiar to those who have read about the “invisible graveyard” that the FDA is responsible for. Yet even listeners who know about the utter lack of interest in patient well being normally shown by federal agencies will find themselves shocked by the degree to which bureaucratic procedures with few plausible benefits govern the lives of sick individuals who want nothing but to get some extra time on this earth and help move science forward. For dealing with the clinical trial system in its current state, Bess is currently trying to figure out ways to assist oncologists and patients in being able to navigate the process at HelpMeFindAClinicalTrial.com. And hopefully by telling her story, she can help inspire much needed reforms to the system.

Rob Henderson joins the podcast to talk about his book Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class. The conversation starts with a discussion about the recent controversy in which Rob was unable to find a book store that would host his launch. Rob also shares insights into his writing style, which focuses on conveying his experiences in a matter-of-fact way rather than dwelling on his internal emotional state. Richard then questions him about the story of his biological parents, and whether he would ever want to reconnect with them, particularly the Korean grandfather who started out as a police detective and then struck it rich as the owner of a fertilizer company. The two go on to discuss other aspects of Rob’s life story, including what the friends he grew up with think of his success, what it was like in the military, including stints in Qatar and Kyrgyzstan, and when he began questioning elite narratives surrounding issues like the importance of family stability and personal responsibility. Finally, Rob talks about what is next for him now that the book promotion tour is winding down.

Romina Boccia is the director of budget and entitlement policy at the Cato Institute, where she writes about government spending, the debt problem, and entitlement reform. She also has a Substack called the Debt Dispatch that you can subscribe to here.

Romina joins the podcast to discuss available paths to deal with the coming entitlement crisis. One potential way to get politicians out of making tough choices is to create a debt commission that takes responsibility for unpopular reforms. Romina has written about using the model of the BRAC commission, which was relied on to close down military bases at the end of the Cold War.

The conversation also touches on the politics of debt, how policymakers are thinking about these issues, Paul Ryan as an unappreciated hero of our time, and much more. Near the end, Romina reflects on her career as a DC policy-wonk, and why she is motivated to help ensure that America continues to be the land of opportunity. If we don’t get entitlements under control, it could potentially degrade our entire way of life. For more discussion on this topic and the difficult choices our leaders will soon be facing, see the previous CSPI podcast with Brian Riedl.

Listen to the podcast with Romina here or watch the video on YouTube.

Brian Chau writes and hosts a podcast at the From the New World Substack, and recently established a new think tank, the Alliance for the Future.

He joins the podcast to discuss why he’s not worried about the alignment problem, where he disagrees with “doomers,” the accomplishments of ChatGPT versus DALL-E, the dangers of regulating AI until progress comes to a halt in the way it did with nuclear power, and more. With his background in computer science, Brian takes issue with many of those who write on this topic, arguing that they think in terms of flawed analogies and know little about the underlying technology. The conversation touches on a previous CSPI discussion with Leopold Aschenbrenner, and the value of continuing to work on alignment.

Brian’s view is that AI doomers are making people needlessly pessimistic. He believes that this technology has the potential to do great things for humanity, particularly when it comes to areas like software development and biotech. But the post-World War II era has seen many examples of government hindering progress, and AFF is dedicated to stopping that from happening with artificial intelligence.

Listen to the conversation here, or watch the video here.

Links

Donate to AFF

AFF manifesto

Brian on diminishing returns to machine learning, and discussing AI with Marc Andreessen

Vaswani et al. on transformers

Limits of current machine learning techniques

Andrew Roberts (website, follow on X) is a historian, Visiting Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and a member of the House of Lords. He joins the podcast to talk about his Napoleon: A Life.

The conversation begins with a discussion of different counterfactuals regarding ways in which Napoleon might have been able to stay in power, which leads to Roberts explaining his view that the wars of the era could be understood at least in part as resulting from a rejection of free trade. Other topics include:

* Meritocracy as a guiding principle of the French Revolution and a justification for Napoleon’s regime

* Napoleon’s personal magnetism and why men were willing to follow him

* The relationship with Josephine, and whether or not it influenced any of his political decision

* Whether Napoleon was in fact the greatest general of his time

See also Hanania’s audio review of the Ridley Scott film, and Roberts’ reviews in Commentary and The Times. For an edited transcript of this conversation, see here.

Brian Riedl is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, focusing on budget, tax, and economic policy. His previous jobs include chief economist to Senator Rob Portman (R-OH), and positions on the Marco Rubio and Mitt Romney presidential campaigns.

He joins the podcast to talk about the financial future of the United States, with a special focus on entitlements. Medicare is projected to run out by 2031, and Social Security only two years later. Because of politicians kicking the can down the road for so long, this will mean that the federal government will at that point have to either implement massive benefit cuts for seniors or significantly raise taxes across the board.

Brian talks about his experience in Washington, the history of negotiations over the debt, and what politicians say when you bring up these facts. We appear to be in an undesirable equilibrium, where everyone’s incentive is to ignore the issues involved, while the status quo is leading us towards disaster. Despite liberals wanting to tax the rich and conservatives calling for a cut to foreign aid and non-entitlement forms of domestic spending, the numbers for such proposals don’t add up. We will either get entitlement spending under control, or become taxed at the level of Europeans.

In one important way, we will actually be worse off than Europe, because their welfare states pay for services and benefits that go to families across a wide section of the population. We are potentially building a US welfare state that will have high taxes primarily to funnel money to the elderly. The fact that older Americans are richer than those who will be supporting them makes the future we are moving towards even more absurd.

Links

Brian Riedl: chart book on spending, report on the limits of taxing the rich, CNN op-ed on interest rates, NYT op-ed on Biden’s promises on entitlements

Brian’s X page, Manhattan Institute website

Niklas Anzinger is the founder and General Partner of Infinita, the first Próspera-based VC fund, which invests in founders overcoming regulatory capture in crypto, biotech and hardware through network states and startup cities. He’s also one of the 100 or so residents of Próspera.

This was quite an optimistic conversation. The title of the podcast comes from the last thing Niklas said, which was that you don’t actually need attention or to talk about grand projects, but just to show the world what you can do.

Niklas is part of the charter city movement, which seeks to build hubs of innovation and progress while bringing the rule of law and economic development to poorer regions of the world. In this eventful conversation, Richard and Niklas touch on

* The mechanics of governance in Próspera

* Getting around red tape and becoming a hub of medical innovation

* Amenities and quality of life in the city

* Upcoming conferences and events

Despite a new government in Honduras that is hostile to charter cities, Niklas is optimistic that they will be able to continue operating. He and Richard also talk about potential medical breakthroughs that Próspera might help bring about, like bacteria that remove cavities from your mouth, and a currently available gene therapy that may make your muscles and bones stronger.

Links

Niklas on X, his Substack, RSS for his podcast

The Ultimate Guide to Próspera

Alex Ugorji on X

Próspera website

Ciudad Morazán

Infinita Manifesto

Scott Alexander on Próspera, Part I and Part II

Mark Lutter on the CSPI podcast

Marc Andreessen, The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

Documentary on medical tourism in Próspera; DW report, with appearance from Niklas

Upcoming Events

Nov 3-5: Crypto Futurism & Legal Engineering 2023 - A Próspera Builders’ Summit

Nov 17-19: DeSci & Longevity Biotech 2023 - A Próspera Builders' Summit

Jan 6-Mar 1: Vitalia - Starting the Frontier City of Life

Chris Rufo joins the podcast to talk about his new book, America's Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything.

Rufo begins by talking about his background and his theory of political change. The conversation then shifts to his new book, the strengths of Ron DeSantis as an administrator, and finally what he’s doing on the board of the New College of Florida. Topics include:

* Where did all of the crazy ideas that seem to have taken over institutions in the last few years come from?

* What took conservatives so long to wake up to the problem?

* Did Rufo end up liking the intellectuals he was studying?

* What are the connections between left-wing ideas and civil rights law?

* How do conservatives reach “good liberals” within institutions?

See the transcript of the conversation at the Richard Hanania Newsletter.

Listen in podcast form or watch the conversation on YouTube.

Links:

* Richard Hanania, The DeSantis Revolution

* Politico profile on the relationship between Rufo and DeSantis

* Rufo, America's Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything.

* Rufo video on the trans movement and “nullification” surgery, discusses his theory of political change

* Hanania, The Origins of Woke (forthcoming book)

* Robert Rector on black-white gaps

* The Atlantic giving Rufo his due

In the popular imagination, the AI alignment debate is between those who say everything is hopeless, and others who tell us there is nothing to worry about.

Leopold Aschenbrenner graduated valedictorian from Columbia in 2021 when he was 19 years old. He is currently a research affiliate at the Global Priorities Institute at Oxford, and previously helped run Future Fund, which works on philanthropy in AI and biosecurity.

He contends that, contrary to popular perceptions, there aren’t that many people working on the alignment issue. Not only that, but he argues that the problem is actually solvable. In this podcast, he discusses what he believes some of the most promising paths forward are. Even if there is only a small probability that AI is dangerous, a small chance of existential risk is something to take seriously.

AI is not all potential downsides. Near the end, the discussion turns to the possibility that it may supercharge a new era of economic growth. Aschebrenner and Hanania discuss fundamental questions of how well GDP numbers still capture what we want to measure, the possibility that regulation strangles AI to death, and whether the changes we see in the coming decades will be on the same scale as the internet or more important.

Listen in podcast form here, or watch on YouTube.

Links:

* Leopold Aschenbrenner, “Nobody’s on the Ball on AGI Alignment.”

* Collin Burns, Haotian Ye, Dan Klein, and Jacob Steinhardt, “Discovering Latent Knowledge in Language Models Without Supervision.”

* Kevin Meng, David Bau, Alex Andonian, and Yonatan Belinkov, “Locating and Editing Factual Associations in GPT.”

* Leopold’s Tweets:

* Using GPT4 to interpret GPT2 .

* What a model says is not necessarily what’s it’s“thinking” internally.

Bryan Caplan joins the podcast to talk about his new book, Voters as Mad Scientists: Essays on Political Irrationality.

Bryan begins by explaining why he hates politics. Much of the conversation then centers around Caplan’s simplistic theory of the right and left. This is compared and contrasted with Scott Alexander’s thrive/survive theory of the political spectrum, Robin Hanson’s theory of farmers and foragers, and Hanania’s “Liberals Read, Conservatives Watch TV.”

Near the end, the discussion turns to the political climate at GMU, and whether the intellectual community that has been built can survive the trend towards DEI. Caplan emphasizes that he has noticed a difference since Glenn Youngkin came to power in Virginia, showing that politics actually matters for determining the future of free speech and intellectual freedom.

For previous Bryan appearances on the podcast, see: May 2021, September 2022, and May 2022.

Listen in podcast form or watch on YouTube.

This week we’re rereleasing a previous episode with Marc Andreessen, originally released on August 16, 2021. He is co-founder and general partner of Andreessen Horowitz.

Earlier in life, he was the co-founder of Opsware, Ning, and Netscape.

Marc joins the podcast to talk about what’s gone wrong with science, the prerequisites for progress, and how tech has changed our lives and has the potential to disrupt stagnant institutions. Topics also include how the internet has influenced dating, what venture capitalists actually do, and whether there is too much – or too little – money in politics.

For a transcript of the conversation, see here.

Robin Hanson joins the podcast to talk about the AI debate. He explains his reasons for being skeptical about “foom,” or the idea that there will emerge a sudden superintelligence that will be able to improve itself quickly and potentially destroy humanity in the service of its goals. Among his arguments are:

* We should start with a very low prior about something like this happening, given the history of the world. We already have “superintelligences” in the form of firms, for example, and they only improve slowly and incrementally

* There are different levels of abstraction with regards to intelligence and knowledge. A machine that can reason very fast may not have the specific knowledge necessary to know how to do important things.

* We may be erring in thinking of intelligence as a general quality, rather than as more domain-specific.

Hanania presents various arguments made by AI doomers, and Hanson responds to each in kind, eventually giving a less than 1% chance that something like the scenario imagined by Eliezer Yudkowsky and others will come to pass.

He also discusses why he thinks it is a waste of time to worry about the control problem before we know what any supposed superintelligence will even look like. The conversation includes a discussion about why so many smart people seem drawn to AI doomerism, and why you shouldn’t worry all that much about the principal-agent problem in this area.

Listen in podcast form or watch on YouTube. You can also read a transcript of the conversation here.

Links:

* The Hanson-Yudkowsky AI-Foom Debate

* Previous Hanson appearance on CSPI podcast, audio and transcript

* Eric Drexler, Engines of Creation

* Eric Drexler, Nanosystems

* Robin Hanson, “Explain the Sacred”

* Robin Hanson, “We See the Sacred from Afar, to See It the Same.”

* Articles by Robin on AI alignment:

* “Prefer Law to Values” (October 10, 2009)

* “The Betterness Explosion” (June 21, 2011)

* “Foom Debate, Again” (February 8, 2013)

* “How Lumpy AI Services?” (February 14, 2019)

* “Agency Failure AI Apocalypse?” (April 10, 2019)

* “Foom Update” (May 6, 2022)

* “Why Not Wait?” (June 30, 2022)

Nicholas Bagley is a professor of law at the University of Michigan, former Chief Legal Counsel to Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and a former attorney in the US Department of Justice. He joins the podcast to talk about his article, “The Procedure Fetish,” in which he calls for liberals to embrace reforms to make federal government agencies less sclerotic and more capable of addressing social problems. Richard presents Bagley with questions surrounding issues such as why we should trust government agencies with more power, the role of cost-benefit analysis, the performance of the FDA during Covid-19, and civil service reform, including President Trump’s executive order that would have made it easier to fire more officials. The two discuss whether there can be a synthesis between the right and left on major issues surrounding government regulation.

Listen to the podcast here, or watch on YouTube.

Links:

* Nicholas Bagley, “The Procedure Fetish”

* Bagley on The Ezra Klein Show

* Bagley on Twitter

* Michael Lewis, The Fifth Risk

* Matt Yglesias on Operation Warp Speed and the blowback to it

* Cass Sunstein on the role of OIRA

* Derek Thompson, “The Abundance Agenda”

Tim Miller is a former political operative who has worked for Jeb Bush and John Huntsman, and is currently a writer for The Bulwark and an MSNBC analyst. He joins the podcast to talk about his political memoir, Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell. With a former insider’s perspective, Miller discusses

* Where the Republican Party went wrong

* The importance of character in politics

* Mistakes made by Clinton and George W. Bush that led us to this point

* To what extent right-wing populists have legitimate grievances

* The effect of the changing media environment on our fractious politics

* Why only Chris Christie could have derailed Trump in 2016

* Whether, to stop Trump, other candidates should get out of the way and support DeSantis

The discussion closes on whether there are reasons to be hopeful about the future of the Republican Party.

Listen here or watch the video on YouTube.

Jobst Landgrebe is a German scientist and entrepreneur. He began his career as a Fellow at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, then moved on to become a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Göttingen, working in cell biology and biomathematics. In April 2013, he founded Cognotekt, an AI based language technology company.

Barry Smith is Professor of Philosophy at the University at Buffalo, with joint appointments in the Departments of Biomedical Informatics, Neurology, and Computer Science and Engineering. He is also Director of the National Center for Ontological Research and Visiting Professor in the Università della Svizzera italiana (USI) in Lugano, Switzerland.

Landgrebe and Smith join the podcast to talk about their book Why Machines Will Never Rule the World: Artificial Intelligence without Fear. As the title indicates, the authors are skeptical towards claims made by Nick Bostrom, Elon Musk, and others about a coming superintelligence that will be able to dominate humanity. Landgrebe and Smith do not only think that such an outcome is beyond our current levels of technology, but that it is for all practical purposes impossible. Among the topics discussed are

* The limits of mathematical modeling

* The relevance of chaos theory

* Our tendency to overestimate human intelligence and underestimate the power of evolution

* Why the authors don’t believe that the achievements of Deep Mind, DALL-E, and ChatGPT indicate that general intelligence is imminent

* Where Langrebe and Smith think that believers in the Singularity go wrong.

Listen in podcast form or watch on YouTube.

Links:

* The Feynman Lectures on Physics

* Landgrebe on Galactica and ChatGPT.

* Rodney Brooks, “Intelligence without Representation.”

* Nick Bostrom, Superintelligence.

Joe Henrich is the Ruth Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology and Professor of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. He is the author of Why Humans Cooperate, The Secret of Our Success, and The WEIRDest People in the World. He joins the podcast to talk about his work. Topics include:

* The implications of Henrich’s theories for the debate over AI alignment

* The nature of intelligence

* Whether genetic differences between populations explain societal outcomes

* If the Ancient Greeks and Romans were already WEIRD

* How to understand the group selection debate

* Why Islamic familial practices may have stunted economic development and growth

* The political and ideological reaction to his last book

Listen in podcast form or watch on YouTube. A transcript of the podcast can be found at the Richard Hanania newsletter.

Links:

* Joe Henrich, “The WEIRDest People in the World.”

* Joe Henrich, “The Secrets of Our Success.”

* Richard Hanania, “How Monogamy and Incest Taboos Made the West.”

* David Epstein, “The Sports Gene.”

* Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, “Don’t Trust Your Gut.”

* Elizabeth Shim, “North Korea finishes fourth at International Mathematical Olympiad.”

* Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study.

* Bryan Caplan, “The Wonder of International Adoption: Adult IQ in Sweden.”

Garett Jones is a Professor of Economics at George Mason University. He joins the podcast to talk about his new book, The Culture Transplant. Richard asks whether IQ is superior to other measures used to predict prosperity, and the relationship between Garett’s new book and Hive Mind. He also presses the author on whether there is a selection effect in data showing that people preserve the traits of their original culture over time.

The conversation then gets into issues of causal inference, namely whether we should focus more on American history or cross-national trends to inform our understanding of US policy. Richard suggests that while immigration might in some contexts lead to larger government, in the US it is arguably the case that diversity has been a hindrance to the expansion of the welfare state.

And how important is trust, actually? It correlates with a lot of good things, but how much is that relationship simply driven by observations from Scandinavia? Garett makes the case for trust having an important causal role. This leads to a discussion of whether trust is simply a proxy for trustworthiness, and whether the latter trait is more important.

Garett also explains why Chinese migration could be a key force in lifting the third world out of poverty. Near the end, he discusses what he thinks America would look like after his preferred immigration policy, and what he’s working on next.

Listen to the podcast here or watch on YouTube.

Links:

* Garett Jones on the Institutionalized podcast

* Previous Jones appearance on the CSPI podcast

* Alex Nowrasteh, critiques of The Culture Transplant, Part 1 and Part 2

* Bryan Caplan review

Alexander Young is a researcher at the UCLA Anderson School of Management Genomics Department and School of Medicine’s Human Genetics Department, working with the Social Science Genetic Association Consortium (SSGAC). He studies the genetics of cognitive ability and educational attainment, with a particular focus on developing methods to uncover true measures of heritability for important traits.

Richard and Alexander talk about why siblings are so useful for this purpose, in the midst of a larger overview of the history of behavioral genetics and modern methods. Twin and adoption studies show much higher levels of heritability than genome wide association studies (GWAS). Why might this be the case? Different theories are discussed, along with ways to solve seeming discrepancies.

The conversation goes on to cover the societal relevance of Alexander’s work, and attempts to isolate research on genes and cognitive ability within the academy.

Listen in podcast form or watch on YouTube:

Links:

* Alexander’s Twitter account.

* Alexander Young, “Solving the Missing Heritability Problem.”

* Alexander Young and co-authors, “Deconstructing the Sources of Genotype-Phenotype Associations in Humans.”

* James Lee, “Don’t Even Go There.”

Aaron Sibarium is a recent graduate of Yale University (2018) and journalist who writes for the Washington Free Beacon. He joins the podcast to discuss his work covering identity politics issues from a conservative perspective, along with his dream of eventually synthesizing his reporting with his own opinion writing.

Aaron and Richard share many of the same frustrations with right-wing media and conservative journalism. They discuss the problems of the conservative movement, including it being prone to misinformation, a lack of interest in policy specifics, mindless tribalism, and the role of differences in intelligence between conservatives and liberals who go into activism and reporting. Aaron argues that the Republican Party might be suffering from an excess of democracy through its primary system, which warps the incentive structures politicians face.

Listen in podcast form or watch the video on YouTube.

Links:

* Richard Hanania, “Liberals Read, Conservatives Watch TV.”

* Richard Hanania, “Conservatism as an Oppositional Culture.”

* Richard Hanania, Tweet on liberal institutions rallying around removing a school dress code in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.

* Aaron Sibarium, “Food and Drug Administration Guidance Drives Racial Rationing of COVID Drugs.”

* Institutionalized Podcast with Aaron Sibarium and Charles Fain Lehman. (Apple)