In this Currents episode, Jim talks to Brian Hanley about his view on the economic impact & recovery of COVID-19, the dramatic social impacts emerging, his views & experience with vaccine creation, vaccine risks & effectiveness, his proposal for rolling out vaccines immediately, immunity dynamics, and more.
Jack Murphy talks to Jim about his professional & political background, why he started The Liminal Order, his book, Democrat to Deplorable, the left's attack on masculinity, Jack's view on the manosphere & men's rights movement, the toxic masculinity meme, gender equality vs equity, post-modernism, the authoritarian left, Gameb, identity politics, the negative impacts of social justice, systemic & implicit racism, Trump's personality, new masculinity, localism, and more.
Robert Conan Ryan talks with Jim about Neo Schumpeterian economic theory, booms & busts dynamics, leverage cycles, golden ages, nuclear power propaganda & legislation, 5 paradigms of Neo Schumpeterianism & the emerging 6th organic paradigm, organic vs digital dynamics, the cultural dimension of revolution, culturally constructed & leveraged economies, dematerialization, transhumanist trends, meaning-making process & constructed institutional impact, the value of utopian cycle...
In this inaugural Currents episode, Jim talks to Simon DeDeo about speech censorship at elite Anglosphere universities, differing generational perspectives on personal liberty, the coddled mind & postmodern neo-Marxist theories, Simon's platonic cocktail party model, hospitality as a norm, College incentives, alternate metaphors for collective education, and more.
Hanzi Freinacht, political philosopher, historian, sociologist, & author talks with Jim about effective value memes, cultural code, what it means to have high depth, dynamics of cognitive complexity, the changeability of culture & systems, social engineering, compulsion vs seduction, prioritizing subjective states, cultural attractor points & bad attractors, game acceptance vs denial & how they impact game change, relative utopias, a brief overview of Hanzi's six types of politic...
In this short extra episode, Jim talks to John Robb about the implication of Defeat Disinfo & how social platforms might respond, memetic armies & street fights, weak political responses to the pandemic, the emerging economic implications of COVID-19, the long-term complexity perspective, wicked risks & robust response methodologies, potential regional US border controls, leaky quarantines, possible break up of The United States, and more.
Steven Levy has a wide-ranging conversation with Jim about his new book, Facebook: The Inside Story. They cover Steven's multi-year access to Facebook & Mark Zuckerberg while researching the book, Facebook’s initial denial of impact on the 2016 election, hate speech vs free speech, engagement metric incentives, micro-targeting & political advertising, early days of the company, key players & collaborators, Harvard, telling Zuckerberg personality traits & interests, acquisitions, ...
Richard Bartlett talks to Jim about his experiences with decentralized work & organization, transitioning from game a to Gameb, models for financial solidarity, technology-first vs psychology-first approaches to collaboration, dyad vs crew vs congregation dynamics, competency-based networks, practices vs principles, moving podcasts towards community, activism vs actionism, decision-making methods & conflict management, post-COVID network change potential, fundamentals focus in big change...
In this short extra episode, Jim talks to John Robb about network decision making & consensus vs dissent dynamics, COVID as a decision making test, herd immunity vs social distancing, key population dynamics, John’s big tech solution & its main roadblocks, reflections on UBI & stimulus, the value of simple solutions, the failed US political response & potential fixes, regional compacts & local responses, managing the backside of the curve, broad testing feasibility, and more.
Joe Brewer talks to Jim about the memetics of regeneration & its connection to homeostasis in living systems, eco pessimism & Joe's view of future collapse, foodchain fragility, fat-tail risks, the role of emotions in existential risk, understanding manufacturing disruptions, potential silver linings in collapse, incremental vs transformation change, permaculture, evolutionary transitions, the complexity of human collaboration, bioregionalism & trade, efficiency risks, the commons, r...
In this short extra episode, Jim talks to Nora Bateson about how the pandemic is changing our relationship to time & mortality, recontextualizing the essential, non-linear future speculation, opportunities & dangers, the fragility of efficiency, changing how we work & travel, our political priorities, prioritizing community, family, locality, health and more.
In this short extra episode, Jim talks to Michelle Girvan about the network dynamics of COVID-19 spread, fat-tailed risks, unintuitive network insights, social distancing dynamics, efficiency vs robustness, challenges of modeling the backside of the curve, the need for testing, economic analysis, potential corporate roles, the Network Epidemiology Online Workshop Series, and more.
Author Laurence Gonzales talks to Jim about his book “Deep Survival” a fascinating look at survival in extreme conditions from both a cognitive science and “you are there” narrative perspective. Includes: multiple survival stories, the value of being cool in survival situations, preparing for an emergency, his perceive & believe heuristic, dangerous group dynamics, fighting stress with humor, learned helplessness, using emotion & reason properly in stressful situations, negative emotiona...
In this short extra episode, Jim talks to Jessica Flack about stressing & testing cultural organization styles, optimizing for wholistic robustness, acting-oriented sensemaking, a department of wicked risks, top-down vs bottom-up response dynamics, liminal spaces, speculative market safeguard techniques, long-term thinking, safety nets, inequality, and more.
In this short extra episode, Jim talks to Robin Hanson about possible dosage related effects on exposure and the related trade-offs of viral dose & deliberate infection strategies, the need for more investment in robustness, capacity vs flexibility, optimizing for adaptability, our lack of leadership, and more.
In this short extra episode, Jim talks to Simon DeDeo about what moving out of social isolation could be like, social norms for risk management, the wide diversity of COVID reactions, making sense personally & collectively, homeostasis & hysteresis, post-COVID impacts on data privacy, travel, free time, education, and more.
Professor Jessica Flack talks to Jim about micro vs macro causality in complex systems, coarse-graining, primate power hierarchies, downward causation, robustness, free will as a feeling, consciousness theories, theoretical biology, laws in adaptive systems, the non-spookiness of emergence, her work's philosophical connections, question asking vs answering, social engineering dynamics, Lord of The Rings & The Foundation Trilogy, agent-based modeling, social policing & punishment, how mat...
In this short extra episode, Jim talks to Bonnitta Roy about what it means to ‘stay with the trouble’, habitual behavior, the value of reflection, consumerism, scarcity & abundance, resourcefulness, the allure of going back to the rat race, system dependence vs interconnection, lack of community in the capitalist system, Game B, the downsides & narrow capabilities of monetary efficiency, and more.
In this short extra episode, Jim talks to Dr. Ben Goertzel about the economic & cultural impacts we could expect after the peak of COVID-19, the end of the tech backlash, income inequality, homeostasis & hysteresis, business travel bets from Jim & Ben, in-person vs virtual events, potential opportunities, cryptocurrency & blockchain, answering the cultural wakeup call, dynamics of centralized responses in decentralized systems, and more.
In this bonus episode, Jim hosts a talk & Q&A on The Stoa. Peter Limberg sets the context for this talk and they then go on to reflect on the impacts & opportunities created by COVID-19, homeostasis vs hysteresis, flaws of Game A thinking, Game B in the developing world & evolution vs revolution, parasitizing Game A, complex systems design, meta-narratives, the evolution of media, and more.
In this short extra episode, Co-Founder & CEO of Everest Bob Reid talks with Jim about the core elements of an effective UBI, short vs long term UBI approaches for the US, the Everest platform’s UBI capabilities & implementation timelines, biometrics, fraud, security, feasibility, and more.
In this short extra episode, Jim talks with Jordan Hall about the lessons we are learning with respect to complex system dynamic response capabilities including: our current sensemaking & limitations, distributed decision-making, finding warning signals in cultural noise, potential prevention & preparedness measures, bottom-up resilience, cultural change-management, exponential vs linear thinking, applying agile processes at the cultural scale, modernizing digital, physical, & operat...
In this short extra episode Jim talks with John Robb about how prepared we were for a pandemic like this, manufacturing, the economic & health impacts, CA & NY trends, impacts of ignoring quarantine, what is needed for a societal recovery, the political response, UBI vs bailouts, and more.
Author, founder & scientist Mark Burgess talks with Jim about promise theory, the many functions of money, its network transfer & physical components, spacetime’s connection to money’s ability to store value, the role of banks, memory & debt, interest & the logic of never-ending growth, deflation & negative interest rates, micro vs macro perspectives on money, geopolitics & foreign exchange, monetary velocity & impacts of stockpiling, currency demurrage, entropy in mo...
Professor Daniel Schrag talks with Jim about Geology’s connection to climate change, the dynamics & scope of abrupt climate changes, global collective action, the value & limits of climate models, thermal inertia in the ocean, the potential impacts of ocean acidification, climate data collection, pros & cons of geoengineering, short-term vs long-term thinking & action, hyperbolic discounting, Dan’s view on sustainable energy generation & storage, the challenges & cost of ...
Beth Pyles talks to Jim about small community living, why she left trial law to become a pastor, the dynamics affluenza & the hedonistic treadmill, how she views meaning & faith, spirituality vs religion, metaphysics, Presbyterianism vs Methodism, the value of community in religion & faith, hell & the devil, her peacemaking experiences in Iraq, the Kurdish people, US foreign intervention, remote warfare & its impact on veterans, questions that will define our future, and much...
Steve LeVine talks with Jim about why battery innovation is so important for sustainable transportation, the challenges & promises of transitioning to electric vehicles, how Steve researched & wrote his book (The Powerhouse), key milestones for electric vehicle range & costs, Tesla’s advantages, Volkswagen's electric aspirations, why charlatans are so common in battery R&D, the pace of progress in battery tech, the history & future of Argonne National Labs, the dynamics &...
Daniel Christian Wahl talks with Jim about catalysis, Game B, geo therapy vs geoengineering, the short-term perspective of fossil fuels & limited resources, viewing population projections in relation to climate impact, the difference between sustainable & regenerative, the bioregional approach, diversity in ecosystems, how Daniel was influenced by systems thinking & complexity theory, epistemic modesty, questions vs answers, why humanity is worth sustaining, the Fermi paradox, seeing...
MIT professor & researcher Jessika Trancik talks with Jim about energy return on investment (EROI), the power of learning curves, the feasibility of an all-electric society, base vs intermittent renewable energy, ‘energy storage plus’, the role & power of soft technologies, ‘soft costs’ of energy production, less known clean energy tech, the challenge of energy distribution & diversification, our collective action problem, discussion of carbon taxes, Jessika’s research priorities, th...
Daniel Mezick talks with Jim about how he got into business consulting & agile processes, what an openspace organization is & how it scales with business size/type, Jim’s experience with agile, how an agile scrum is structured, the value of DevOps & product managers, types of agile processes & common pitfalls, learned helplessness, what openspace technology is & how it works, managing ambiguity & change management, inviting vs delegating as a leader, understanding authori...
