Episode 12: Alexander Bard

Episode 12: Alexander Bard

This week ⁠Daniel⁠ and ⁠Chase⁠ are joined by ⁠Jack Ek⁠ and his friend, the legendary ⁠Alexander Bard⁠, who describes himself as a “philosopher who writes f***ing books" and who is according to his ⁠Wiki⁠: a Swedish musician, author, lecturer, artist, songwriter, music producer, ⁠TV personality⁠, religious and political activist, one of the founders of the ⁠Syntheist religious movement⁠, and member of the bands ⁠Army of Lovers⁠ & ⁠BWO⁠, amongst numerous other projects. More recently, he cofounded a secret society called ⁠The Grey Robes⁠, AKA the “Freemasons of Decentralization”.

We cover:

• How Jack and Bard met through Euroburner culture

• Is Bucharest the next Berlin? Or…can there never be a ‘next Berlin’

• Property ownership as lynchpin for scene building

• The secrets of disproportionate Swedish soft power

• America as theater for the rest of the world

• Lessons from Urbit: too Kantian

• Philosophy’s role in engineering 

• Behavioral Economics and ‘Nudge Units’ 

• The need for spirituality when grappling with the ramifications of AI

• AI as a fundamentally truth seeking technology and therefore a threat to authoritarian governments

• The devolution of the internet from Open and flat into a tribal, feudal dark forest.

• Decentralization vs Centralization as the only important political axis

• Navigating community building in a decentralized world (parallelize it)

Artwork: J.F. Clemens after Nicolai Abildgaard, “Ossian’s Swan Song”, 1787