The Jim Rutt Show - podcast cover

The Jim Rutt Show

The Jim Rutt Showwww.jimruttshow.com
Crisp conversations with critical thinkers at the leading edge of science, technology, politics, and social systems.

Episodes

EP 302 Daniel Mezick on Games and Governance

Jim talks with Daniel Mezick on the theme of games and their relationship to governance. They discuss Jane McGonigal's four properties of games, the nature of authority, position-based vs role-based authority, formal vs. informal authority structures, finite & infinite games, mutable games, the paradox of self-amendment, the U.S. Constitution as a game, progress tracking in governance systems, roles, artifacts, rules, events, Constitutional reforms, problems with a two-party system, unintend...

May 30, 202554 minSeason 1Ep. 302

EP 301 Zak Stein on K-12 Education in the AI Era

Jim talks with Zak Stein about the psychological and developmental risks of AI in K-12 education. They discuss education vs schooling, technology's role in human-to-human interaction, GPS & skill atrophy, prosthetic vs enhancement technologies, multipolar traps in AI, cognitive diminishment & skill development, teacherly authority, attention as a constrained resource, attention as a service, parasocial attachment, risks of anthropomorphizing AI, object relations theory, bad parenting &am...

May 27, 2025Season 1Ep. 301

EP 300 Daniel Rodriguez on AI-Assisted Software Development

Jim talks with Daniel Rodriguez about the state of AI software development and its implementation in industry. They discuss Daniel's background at Microsoft & Anaconda, transformer-based technologies, software engineering as hard vs soft science, vibe coding, barriers to entry in software engineering, cognitive styles needed for programming, Daniel's history with LLMs, unit testing & test-driven development with AI, social aspects of AI adoption, quality concerns & technical debt, st...

May 22, 20251 hr 12 minSeason 1Ep. 300

EP 299 Ryan Blosser on Permaculture for Food and Friendship

Jim talks with Ryan Blosser about the ideas in his book Mulberries in the Rain: Growing Permaculture Plants for Food and Friendship, co-authored with Trevor Piersol. They discuss the motivation behind writing a permaculture book, the human sector in permaculture design, financial challenges of permaculture farming, 8 forms of capital, food forest design principles, plant guild functions & relationships, persimmons, hunting stories, willows, redbuds, bourbon, black locust properties, rhubarb ...

May 21, 20251 hr 36 minSeason 1Ep. 299

EP 298 Adam Lake on Rebooting American Democracy

Jim talks with Adam Lake about Reboot America, a project aimed at reforming American democracy. They discuss existential threats facing humanity, the two-party corporate duopoly, a Princeton study on policy preferences, first-past-the-post voting problems, campaign finance issues, social media's role in polarization, wealth & income inequality, Bernie Sanders's Fight Oligarchy tour, the Democratic Party's cultural baggage, Trump country perspectives, courage in leadership, how the quality of...

May 15, 202544 minSeason 1Ep. 298

EP 297 Sara Walker on the Physics of Life’s Emergence

Jim talks with Sara Walker about the ideas in her new book Life as No One Knows It: The Physics of Life's Emergence. They discuss Sara's path from theoretical physics to astrobiology, the biggest scientific questions, philosophy of science & theory development, historical approaches to origin of life research, Schrödinger's negative entropy concept, Prigogine's dissipative systems, information as a causal force at life's origin, emergence as a scientific concept, constructor theory of inform...

May 13, 2025Season 1Ep. 297

EP 296 Ashley Hodgson on Economic Mythology and System Change

Jim talks with Ashley Hodgson about her YouTube series "The New Enlightenment" and its heterodox perspectives on economics and social systems. They discuss Iain McGilchrist's influence & his book "The Matter with Things," economic mythology & its role in upholding the current system, the Bernays era of programmed consumerism, GDP growth myths, destructive growth value, problems with GDP, resource extraction vs other forms of growth, Galbraith's economics, corporate accountability structures, dis...

Apr 15, 2025Season 1Ep. 296

EP 295 John Robb on How a Networked Organization Blitzed D.C.

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 nig...

Mar 31, 202558 minSeason 1Ep. 295

EP 294 Timothy Clancy on an AI Cold War

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 i...

Mar 28, 20251 hr 16 minSeason 1Ep. 294

EP 293 Brendan Graham Dempsey on Cosmic Teleology and Emergence Vectors

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 entro...

Mar 25, 20251 hr 16 minSeason 1Ep. 293

EP 292 Emil Ejner Friis on Building a Listening Society

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, milit...

Mar 18, 2025Season 1Ep. 292

EP 291 Jeff Sebo on Who Matters, What Matters, and Why

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 ...

Mar 13, 20251 hr 24 minSeason 1Ep. 291

EP 290 Mark Stahlman on Trump as the Avatar of the Digital Paradigm Shift

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 Sab...

Mar 11, 20251 hr 25 minSeason 1Ep. 290

EP 289 Adam B. Levine on AI-Powered Programming for Non-Developers

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 ...

Mar 06, 20251 hr 26 minSeason 1Ep. 289

EP 288 BJ Campbell on Cops, Belief, and Chainsaw-Faced Robot Dogs

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, a...

Mar 04, 20251 hr 19 minSeason 1Ep. 288

EP 287 Jonathan Rauch on the Epistemic Crisis

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 mov...

Feb 27, 20251 hr 37 minSeason 1Ep. 287

EP 286 Bob Levy on the Use and Abuse of Presidential Power

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 cris...

Feb 24, 20251 hr 5 minSeason 1Ep. 286

EP 285 Josh Bernoff on AI, Writing, and Thinking

Jim talks with Josh Bernoff, author of Writing Without Bullshit, about the impact of AI on writing education and professional writing. They discuss Josh's background and career, Stephen Lane's recent op-ed arguing that AI should take over writing mechanics, problems with AI-generated writing, the role of writing in thinking, ChatGPT's "deep research," Jim's ScriptHelper project, the decline in math & navigation skills, the importance of memos for corporate decision-making, literacy as a fundamen...

Feb 18, 202553 minSeason 1Ep. 285

EP 284 Jordan Hall on AI, the Commons, and the Church

Jim talks with Jordan Hall about the relationship between humanity and advanced AI. They discuss the false dichotomy of state vs market control of AI, the commons & the church as organizing principles, community vs society, why alignment with humanity is by definition impossible, the role of symbols & organizing principles in communities, how Moloch & Mammon shape AI development, hyper-concentration of power, neo-feudalism, the possibility of an AI singleton, entropy in communities, an alternati...

Feb 13, 2025Season 1Ep. 284

EP 283 Brian Chau on the Trump Administration and AI

Jim talks with Brian Chau about what the new administration could mean for AI development. They discuss recent actions by the Tump administration including repealing Biden's executive order & the Stargate infrastructure project, Biden's impact on AI, the formation of the Alliance for the Future, regulatory bureaucracy, state patchwork laws, censorship, the Gemini controversy & DEI in AI, safety restrictions in chat models, the meaning of DeepSeek, economic implications of model distillation, his...

Feb 11, 20251 hr 8 minSeason 1Ep. 283

EP 282 Tyson Yunkaporta on Indigenous Law, Lore, and Learning

Jim talks with Tyson Yunkaporta about the ideas in his new book Right Story, Wrong Story: Adventures in Indigenous Thinking. They discuss a symbolic emu visitor on Jim's farm, Aboriginal collective pronouns, Sand Talk's impact, wrong canoes, lore vs law, how Aboriginal law adapted to invasion, ritualized violence & rule-governed fighting, Aboriginal knowledge systems & peer review, signals & spirit in natural systems, the sacred as a way to deal with complex systems, Plato's noble lie, restricte...

Feb 06, 20251 hr 34 minSeason 1Ep. 282

EP 281 Jeff Hawkins and Viviane Clay on the Thousand Brains Theory

Jim talks with Jeff Hawkins and Viviane Clay about the Thousand Brains Project and Jeff's book A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence. They discuss Mountcastle's theory of the neocortex's universal algorithm, cortical columns & their structure, learning modules in AI sensory systems, reprogramming of the neocortex, the 6 layers of cortex, mini-columns & macro-columns, the visual cascade, reference frames as essential for knowledge representation, "voting" for perceptual consensus, how t...

Feb 04, 20251 hr 32 minSeason 1Ep. 281

EP 280 Rob Henderson on Luxury Beliefs

Jim talks with Rob Henderson about his book Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class and the concept of luxury beliefs. They discuss Rob's journey from foster care to Yale and Cambridge, Jim's background, the decline in two-parent families from 1960 to 2005, changing forms of elite hypocrisy, intra-elite competition, corporate adoption of woke beliefs, enforcement of ideological conformity, the spread of academic ideas into mainstream culture, attributions of success, drugs an...

Jan 30, 20251 hr 14 minSeason 1Ep. 280

EP 279 Samuel Scarpino on H5N1 (Bird Flu) and Pandemic Risk

Jim talks with epidemiology expert Samuel Scarpino about the recent spread of H5N1 (bird flu) in dairy cows and its implications for public health. They discuss the historical context of H5N1, fatality rates, modeling the spread, network effects in disease transmission, current surveillance efforts, H5N1 transmission mechanisms, challenges of human respiratory transmission, lessons learned & mislearned from Covid-19, the current state of the H5N1 vaccine preparation, extreme pandemic response sc...

Jan 09, 20251 hr 6 minSeason 1Ep. 279

EP 278 Peter Wang on AI, Copyright, and the Future of Intelligence

Jim has a wide-ranging conversation with recurring guest Peter Wang on AI copyright frameworks and the rapidly changing tech landscape. They discuss "the Chattening" (ChatGPT's release in November 2022) & its impact, parallels between current AI & the invention of science, humans as narrow-band sensors, cybernetics & control systems, the unbearable slowness of being, the Platonic Representation Hypothesis, language & intelligence, why eyeballs are white, copyright challenges with AI, the Anacond...

Jan 02, 20251 hr 32 minSeason 1Ep. 278

EP 277 Kristian Rönn on Darwinian Traps and How to Escape Them

Jim talks with Kristian Rönn, co-founder of the carbon accounting tech company Normative, about his book The Darwinian Trap: The Hidden Evolutionary Forces That Explain Our World (and Threaten Our Future). They discuss Darwinian traps & demons, the parable of Picher, Oklahoma, the "cost of doing business" mentality, beauty filter arms races, perverse incentives in science, Goodhart's law, how nature deals with defection vs cooperation, kamikaze mutants, pandas as evolutionary dead ends, close ca...

Dec 20, 2024Season 1Ep. 277

EP 276 Carolyn Dicey Jennings on Attention and Mental Control

Jim talks with philosopher and cognitive scientist Carolyn Dicey Jennings about her book Attention and Mental Control. They discuss mental control vs self-control, the ping pong metaphor, prioritization vs single-threaded focus, voluntary vs automatic attention, perceptual processing & conscious attention, 3 forms of interest, meditation & mind wandering, hyperfocus as a superpower, ADHD & neurodiversity, the emergence of control, wave activity in the brain, local vs global brain activity, and m...

Dec 19, 20241 hr 36 minSeason 1Ep. 276

EP 275 Rachel Winkler on Mass Deportation

Jim talks with lawyer and former DHS policy person Rachel Winkler about Trump's promise to carry out a large-scale deportation operation. They discuss estimates of undocumented immigrants in the U.S., mixed-status households & the aging undocumented population, the legal standing of an undocumented immigrant, types of undocumented immigrants, the process for pending deportation orders, potential policy changes, prosecutorial discretion, practical constraints on mass deportations, private detenti...

Dec 17, 20241 hr 7 minSeason 1Ep. 275

EP 274 Richard Overy on Why War?

Jim talks with historian Richard Overy about his new book Why War? They discuss historians' shyness in thinking about the nature of war, a correspondence between Einstein & Freud, the meaning of the term, the "pacified past," the interplay between warfare & cooperation, recent ethological studies of chimpanzees, conformity, 4 major types of anthropological evidence, the status of warriors over time, ecological drivers of war, Marxian analyses of war, hubristic warfare, Rome's centuries of warfar...

Dec 13, 202459 minSeason 1Ep. 274

EP 273 Gregg Henriques on the Unified Theory of Knowledge

Jim talks with Gregg Henriques about his new book UTOK: The Unified Theory of Knowledge. They discuss the problem the book addresses, 3 vectors of knowing, the metacrisis, avoiding despair & techno-optimism, the enlightenment gap, the iQuad coin, the UTOK garden frame, a descriptive metaphysics for science, behavior & mind, endo-naturalism, 3 kinds of mindedness, webs of justification, the periodic table of behaviors, behavioral investment theory, the influence matrix, the tree of life, why wisd...

Dec 03, 20241 hr 35 minSeason 1Ep. 273
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