By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 31 Mar 25
Jim talks with John Robb about the ideas in his recent essay “Blitzing DC,” about how a networked organization took over Washington. They discuss the early roots of network warfare in Iraq, McLuhan-esque societal rewiring, open source dynamics & plausible promise, the Arab Spring & Occupy movements, empathy triggers, Trump’s 2016 campaign as a hybrid swarm, The_Donald as a meme amplifier, the Blue Network’s counter-response, the George Floyd protests & moral framework, censorship & ‘the long night’, digital rights & moderation, the Ukraine conflict & swarm response, the Red Network reconfiguration, digital ledgers & truth-seeking accounts, the professionalization of Red
Jim talks with John Robb about the ideas in his recent essay “Blitzing DC,” about how a networked organization took over Washington. They discuss the early roots of network warfare in Iraq, McLuhan-esque societal rewiring, open source dynamics & plausible promise, the Arab Spring & Occupy movements, empathy triggers, Trump’s 2016 campaign as a hybrid swarm, The_Donald as a meme
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 28 Mar 25
Jim talks with Timothy Clancy about wicked mess problems & the potential for a new Cold War centered on AI. They discuss the evolution from chat-based to reasoning AI, military applications, social & systemic complexity in national security, the scaling hypothesis, China vs US competition, DeepSeek R1 model implications, export controls on GPU chips, Taiwan’s strategic importance, multipolar trap & arms race dynamics, power & chip requirements, training vs implementation costs, context scaling in reasoning AI, innovation in AI efficiency, models & simulations in military planning, validation challenges, statistical distributions vs single predictions, Taiwan conflict scenarios & deterrence strategies, operational
Jim talks with Timothy Clancy about wicked mess problems & the potential for a new Cold War centered on AI. They discuss the evolution from chat-based to reasoning AI, military applications, social & systemic complexity in national security, the scaling hypothesis, China vs US competition, DeepSeek R1 model implications, export controls on GPU chips, Taiwan’s strategic importance, multipolar trap &
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 25 Mar 25
Jim talks with Brendan Graham Dempsey, picking up on a disagreement they had on Facebook about the teleology of the universe. They discuss Aristotle’s influence on the topic, Terrence Deacon’s work on naturalizing teleology, the distinction between purpose & goal-directed behavior, cosmic teleology, Teilhard de Chardin’s “Omega Point,” Whitehead’s relational teleology, Ilya Prigogine’s dissipative structures, energy efficiency comparisons between organisms & stars, the cosmic imperative of entropy production, energy rate density as a complexity measure, whether entropy is the goal or a byproduct of complexification, origin of life as contingent or necessity, Alexander Bard’s emergence vectors, questioning of the heat
Jim talks with Brendan Graham Dempsey, picking up on a disagreement they had on Facebook about the teleology of the universe. They discuss Aristotle’s influence on the topic, Terrence Deacon’s work on naturalizing teleology, the distinction between purpose & goal-directed behavior, cosmic teleology, Teilhard de Chardin’s “Omega Point,” Whitehead’s relational teleology, Ilya Prigogine’s dissipative structures, energy efficiency comparisons between organisms
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 18 Mar 25
Jim talks with Emil Ejner Friis about political metamodernism and what comes after postmodernism. They discuss the “woke vacuum” & its failure to include common folks, psychosocial problems vs material challenges in Western countries, Jim’s pushback on postmodernism, Trump as the first postmodern president, personal vs institutional change, emotional states & leadership, late-stage financialized capitalism’s effects on communities, European vs American approaches to industry/manufacturing, military alliances & European defense independence, the urban-rural divide in American politics, “internet trans” vs medical gender dysphoria, social media’s role in amplifying cultural divisions, the intersubjective verification of the inter-objective, comparing the internet with the
Jim talks with Emil Ejner Friis about political metamodernism and what comes after postmodernism. They discuss the “woke vacuum” & its failure to include common folks, psychosocial problems vs material challenges in Western countries, Jim’s pushback on postmodernism, Trump as the first postmodern president, personal vs institutional change, emotional states & leadership, late-stage financialized capitalism’s effects on communities, European vs
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 13 Mar 25
Jim talks with Jeff Sebo about the ideas in his book The Moral Circle: Who Matters, What Matters, and Why. They discuss the concept of the moral circle, harming cats vs harming cars, the case study of Happy the elephant, Descartes’ view of animals, phenomenal consciousness, Thomas Nagel’s bat argument, the Google engineer who claimed LaMDA was conscious, the substrate dependence of consciousness, a factory waste disposal dilemma, animal rescue triage scenarios, probability calculations in moral consideration, the “one in a thousand” threshold, computational constraints in moral calculations, human exceptionalism & its limitations, fully automated luxury communism & rewilding Earth, responsibilities to
Jim talks with Jeff Sebo about the ideas in his book The Moral Circle: Who Matters, What Matters, and Why. They discuss the concept of the moral circle, harming cats vs harming cars, the case study of Happy the elephant, Descartes’ view of animals, phenomenal consciousness, Thomas Nagel’s bat argument, the Google engineer who claimed LaMDA was conscious, the substrate dependence of
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 11 Mar 25
Jim talks with Mark Stahlman about Trump as an avatar of the current digital transformation. They discuss the GameB movement & complexity theory, predictions made to the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment, security through development as alternative to war, the three spheres (East, West, Digital), China’s approach to digital vs. the Western approach, Catholic social teaching principles, neo-feudalism vs. the scribal paradigm, Humanity 2.0, Aristotelian concepts of soul & hylomorphism, Cyber Sabbath practices, transitions between oral/scribal/digital paradigms, technological change as evolutionary pruning, Jonathan Rauch’s Constitution of Knowledge, memory & imagination as key faculties, versions of the Enlightenment project, Daoism &
Jim talks with Mark Stahlman about Trump as an avatar of the current digital transformation. They discuss the GameB movement & complexity theory, predictions made to the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment, security through development as alternative to war, the three spheres (East, West, Digital), China’s approach to digital vs. the Western approach, Catholic social teaching principles, neo-feudalism vs. the
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 6 Mar 25
Jim talks with Adam B. Levine about AI programming aids for non-techies and the future of Bitcoin. They discuss Adam’s background as a “technical non-technical” person, the evolution from manual LLM prompting to using IDEs, Windsurf as an AI-first IDE, Claude 3.7’s thinking mode, productivity improvements with AI coding tools, different platforms like Cursor and Cline, the “pure idea space” vs technical execution, the role of liberal arts people in tech teams, Bitcoin as digital gold, Schelling points in cryptocurrency, the US dollar as hegemonic currency, “pools of fools” theory, sovereign wealth funds moving into Bitcoin, El Salvador’s Bitcoin investment,
Jim talks with Adam B. Levine about AI programming aids for non-techies and the future of Bitcoin. They discuss Adam’s background as a “technical non-technical” person, the evolution from manual LLM prompting to using IDEs, Windsurf as an AI-first IDE, Claude 3.7’s thinking mode, productivity improvements with AI coding tools, different platforms like Cursor and Cline, the “pure idea space”
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 4 Mar 25
Jim talks with BJ Campbell about the ideas in his Substack essay “On Cops, Belief, and Chainsaw Faced Robot Dogs.” They discuss forms of social control, absolute police states vs. belief states, the role of belief vs. actual enforcement in maintaining order, the noble lie concept & Plato’s original formulation, the 2020 crime spike & “defund the police” movement, the history of police forces & alternative methods of maintaining order, the “God-shaped hole” concept, membranes & group coherence, anthropological research on fairness, non-supernatural belief systems, marketing challenges for new social systems, money as a noble lie & coordination signal, Saudi
Jim talks with BJ Campbell about the ideas in his Substack essay “On Cops, Belief, and Chainsaw Faced Robot Dogs.” They discuss forms of social control, absolute police states vs. belief states, the role of belief vs. actual enforcement in maintaining order, the noble lie concept & Plato’s original formulation, the 2020 crime spike & “defund the police” movement, the
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 27 Feb 25
Jim talks with Jonathan Rauch about the ideas in his book The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth. They discuss the epistemic crisis, Plato’s Theaetetus, Trump & propaganda techniques, the Constitution of Knowledge as a framework for epistemics, the “marketplace of ideas” metaphor, the reality-based community, the personal-institutional spiral, the social funnel of knowledge, social media’s impact on epistemics, advertising vs subscription models, meme space pollution, the anti-vax movement, the importance of free speech to the gay rights movement, recommendations for defending truth, supporting institutions, speaking out against misinformation, maintaining viewpoint diversity, and much more. Episode Links The Constitution of Knowledge: A
Jim talks with Jonathan Rauch about the ideas in his book The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth. They discuss the epistemic crisis, Plato’s Theaetetus, Trump & propaganda techniques, the Constitution of Knowledge as a framework for epistemics, the “marketplace of ideas” metaphor, the reality-based community, the personal-institutional spiral, the social funnel of knowledge, social media’s impact on epistemics, advertising vs subscription
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 24 Feb 25
Jim talks with Bob Levy about presidential powers, their history, and their potential for abuse. They discuss the nature of the presidential pardon, recent controversial pardons by Trump & Biden, proposed reforms, 3 main purposes of the pardon, court blocks on executive actions, the firing of federal employees, the Impoundment Control Act, immigration & deportation under Trump, presidential power over tariffs, courts as guardrails, the timeline for legal challenges, potential constitutional crisis scenarios, Congress’s abdication of power, the growth of the administrative state, options if Trump defies court orders, contempt powers, impeachment as the ultimate check, and much more. Episode
Jim talks with Bob Levy about presidential powers, their history, and their potential for abuse. They discuss the nature of the presidential pardon, recent controversial pardons by Trump & Biden, proposed reforms, 3 main purposes of the pardon, court blocks on executive actions, the firing of federal employees, the Impoundment Control Act, immigration & deportation under Trump, presidential power over