W. Brian Arthur & Jim have a wide-ranging talk about his book, The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves. They talk about the surprisingly little work on the nature of technology, invention vs innovation, understanding technology as harnessed phenomena, human purpose, the fluid relationship between economies & tech, technology as building on existing components, multi=level evolutionary dynamics in tech, theory of invention & problem solving, domains of technology, rela...
Jul 26, 2021•1 hr 31 min•Season 1Ep. 138
Alexander Beiner & Jim have a wide-ranging talk about Beiner’s recent essay “Who’s in Charge of Psilocybin?”. They discuss the state of play regarding psilocybin’s legality, its effectiveness in therapeutic contexts, therapeutic versus personal-growth uses, the value and limitations of clinical trials, metaphors for psychedelics risk, the differences between synthesized and natural-grown psilocybin, COMPASS Pathways’ big patent grab and its threat to psilocybin access, the battle for narrati...
Jul 18, 2021•51 min
Connor Leahy continues his conversion with Jim in this wide-ranging chat about his new GPT-J model, the background & approach of Aleph Alpha, attention in AI, our food maximizer & AGI risk, narrow algorithm impacts, proto-AGI, risk thresholds & timelines, safeguard complexities, slow vs fast AI take-off, Connor's brilliantly strange Counting Consciousness series, biological blockchain & the hard problem of trust, the AI consciousness diversity question, and more.
Jul 15, 2021•1 hr 6 min
Ken Stanley & Jim have a wide-ranging talk about one of his co-authored papers, "Designing neural networks through neuroevolution". They cover neuroevolution dynamics, resistance to evolutionary thinking in AI, the evolutionary timescale, understanding genetic algorithms, neural networks & their role in neuroevolution, Ken's unifying NeuroEvolution of Augmenting Topologies (NEAT) method, scaling NEAT, the importance of diversity in innovation, novelty search, indirect encoding, Hybercube...
Jul 13, 2021•1 hr 31 min•Season 1Ep. 137
Reason.fm co-founder Sam Harris talks to Jim about his TEDx talk, "The Genius You Need to Listen to Is Yourself". They cover technology attention highjacking, putting our phones away, social media algorithms, playing games you can win, utilizing rules, natural social interactions, online dating dynamics, time blocking, the value of boredom, where humanity is heading, and much more.
Jul 10, 2021•36 min
Songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, writer, and music educator Harvey Reid talks to Jim about his book, The Troubadour Chronicles: A History, A Celebration and A Manifesto. They talk about Harvey's musical background, what a troubadour is, solo performance & collaborations, Jim & Harvey's favorite troubadours & performances, Bob Dylan, musical education's failure to support troubadours, over-emphasis on sight-reading & notation, music tablature, tunning variation, multi-cultural t...
Jul 06, 2021•1 hr 42 min•Season 1Ep. 136
Jim has a wide-ranging talk with Dennis Waters about his book, Behavior and Culture in One Dimension: Sequences, Affordances, and the Evolution of Complexity. They chat about the challenges of interdisciplinary work in academia, value in understanding sequences, emergent behavior, constraint dynamics, instructive & descriptive sequences, emergent patterns, why "talk is cheap", co-evolution, the Fermi paradox, origins of life, energetic costs, rate independence vs dependence, laws vs rules, s...
Jul 01, 2021•1 hr 22 min•Season 1Ep. 135
Forrest Landry & Jim continue their exploration of metaphysics by diving deep into the Non-Relative Ethics that arise from Forrest’s Immanent Metaphysics. They cover ethical philosophies, defining effective choice, ethics vs morality, the relationship of choice & ethics, defining self beyond the human, localization in perception, the uncertainty of choice & limits of reason, the role of integrity, prioritizing symmetry & continuity, value, purpose, meaningfulness, Forrest's view ...
Jun 28, 2021•1 hr 44 min•Season 1Ep. 134
Melanie Mitchell & Jim talk about her recent paper, "Why AI is Harder Than We Think". They cover AI fantasies, self-driving cars, prediction failures, AI winters & summers, Melanie's four fallacies, common sense, theory of mind, defining understanding, embodied cognition, the role of emotions in intelligence, the future of AI, and more.
Jun 26, 2021•43 min
Steve Barbour talks to Jim about his company, Upstream Data Inc. — a company that uses natural gas to mine bitcoin. They cover the dynamics of excess natural gas release, how methane is normally vented or burnt up, Upstream's environmental impact, mining hardware setup & efficiency, cost per kilowatt, customer RIO, bitcoin uses, monetary theory, 2nd & 3rd generation cryptocurrencies, inflationary currencies, zero-sum environmental thinking, and more.
Jun 24, 2021•1 hr
Robert Tercek talks to Jim about his book, Vaporized: Solid Strategies for Success in a Dematerialized World. They cover the usefulness of the vapor metaphor, centralization vs decentralization, the impact of closed application ecosystems, value in intangible assets, hardware vs software profitability, the telling story of Tower Records, rapid consumer market changes, big tech bundling strategies, the birth of mobile games, Epic Games vs Apple, digital goods, race to the VR metaverse, digitized ...
Jun 21, 2021•1 hr 40 min•Season 1Ep. 133
Britt Adkins has a wide-ranging talk with Jim about the space industry. They explore prioritizing space funding & common misconceptions, power of the overview effect, global vs celestial community, cultural & political impacts, public participation strategies, physical / psychological adaptation to space & other planets, scaling humanity, urban planning in space, orbital debris & waste, environmental design dynamics, cultural commons in space, policy challenges & the Outer Sp...
Jun 17, 2021•1 hr 31 min•Season 1Ep. 132
Samo Burja joins Jim to talk about the Consilience Project: a project that aims to create positive cultural change in unique ways. They cover its founding goals & approaches, big tech's ability to amplify negative externalities, the rise of Trump, memetic noise & virality, how digital cultures change, types of articles, sense-making, meaning-making, choice-making & social norms, de-energizing & carbon accounting, unique ways the Consilience team collaborates & operates, new/u...
Jun 15, 2021•56 min
Jason Mauck talks to Jim about what lead him to farm, how & why he started Constant Canopy, agriculture innovation dynamics & economics, finding crop combinations, turning manure into methane, utilizing Biochar, acquiring a meat-packing business, building direct-to-consumer meat distribution & strategy, farm integration models (livestock, agro, food, entertainment...), robotic berry picking, and much more.
Jun 14, 2021•1 hr 7 min•Season 1Ep. 131
Ken Stanley and Jim talk about his wide-ranging book Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective. They cover the no free lunch theorem, exploitations vs exploration, the myth & issues of objectives, the room of all images & adjacent possible, the problems & dynamics of deception, the power of serendipity, gradients of interestingness, intuition & novelty search, social change & innovation, emergent education & AI insights, incrementalism, risk & reward,...
Jun 07, 2021•1 hr 29 min•Season 1Ep. 130
Connor Leahy has a wide-ranging chat with Jim about the state & future of Deep Learning. They cover the history of EleutherAI, how GPT-3 works, the dynamics & power of scaling laws, ideal sampling rates & sizes for models, data sets, EleutherAI's opensource GTP-Neo & GTP-NeoX, PyTorch vs TensorFlow, TPU's vs GPU's, the challenge of benchmarking & evaluations, quadradic bottlenecks, broad GTP-3 applications, Connors thoughts on Jim's proposed GPT-3 research project, untapped G...
Jun 04, 2021•53 min
Stephanie Lepp & Jim have a wide-ranging talk on her two-time Webby Award winning video series, Deep Reckonings. They start by covering the history & intentions of Deep Reckonings, deep fake technology, our post-truth crisis, and the pros & cons of irony. They then go on to talk about the Deep Reckonings videos: how she chose people to include, reflections on the Mark Zuckerberg video, the challenge of remaining in good faith, free speech & censorship, GameB, Joe Rogan & Alex...
May 31, 2021•1 hr 22 min•Season 1Ep. 129
Forrest Landry & Jim continue their exploration of metaphysics by diving deep into a theorem that arises from Forrest's Immanent Metaphysics called Incommensuration Theorem (ICT). They start by defining the key concepts of ICT: symmetry & continuity, domains & their three elements, what it means to know something, measurement & comparison, sameness & difference, content & context, access control limits, time & causality, the principle of identity, and the nature of ep...
May 27, 2021•1 hr 46 min•Season 1Ep. 128
Jonathan Rowson & Jim have a wide-ranging talk about his book, The Moves That Matter: A Chess Grandmaster on the Game of Life. They cover chess as a meta metaphor, partial vs full info, randomness, freedom, concentration vs flow states, chess player ratings, mastery, embodied intuition, AI, fundamental dimensions of chess, utilizing time, climate change, wisdom, the strong vs the weak, religion & fundamental reality, metaphysical & ontological modesty, purpose, meaning, and much more...
May 24, 2021•1 hr 34 min•Season 1Ep. 127
Jordan Gruber & James Fadiman talk to Jim about their book, Your Symphony of Selves: Discover and Understand More of Who We Are. They cover our multiple selves, self vs mood, arguing with ourselves, David Bowie, history of the single-self assumption, connecting with our younger selves, self-switching benefits & methods, authenticity, contextuality, connections to mental illness, psychedelics & meditation, integrating selves, cultural differences, and much more.
May 17, 2021•1 hr 32 min•Season 1Ep. 127
Samo Burja & Jim continue their conversation about his book, Great Founder Theory. They talk about Samo's interest in exploring why there's never been an immortal society, lack of historical Greece documentation, defining functional bureaucracy & delegation, competition pros/cons & dynamics, skill distribution & capitalization, measuring & defining skills over time scales, utilizing & nurturing ambition, what empire theory exposes about societies & institutions, inevi...
May 10, 2021•1 hr 21 min•Season 1Ep. 125
Tyson Yunkaporta joins Jim for another wide-ranging yarn that starts off with DMT & machine elves. They cover Jim's misspent youth, police violence, nuance vs Occam's razor, Tyson's impressions of GameB & the sensemakers, Tyson's unpublished Survivance essay, Jim's recent emu encounter & live intentional ego death, utilizing drugs, selling our souls to social media, debt jubilee & the road to GameB, ProtoBs as a dynamic exploration, utopia vs protopia, the value of cognitive diss...
May 07, 2021•1 hr 10 min
Former Ford CEO, Jim Hackett & Jim have a wide-ranging talk about the history & future of electric cars. They cover Ford & Edison's first electric car, the current state of the electric cars, understanding scaling & natural systems, business change vs death, the evolution of car models & sizes, all-electric car plausibility, carbon taxes, electric range & charging time, electricity demand & smart grids, the history of Ford's Mustang Mach-e, the road to self-driving ca...
May 03, 2021•1 hr 36 min•Season 1Ep. 124
Trent Loos talks to Jim about his multi-generational Nebraska-based ranching operation. They cover the deep history of the family ranch, types of animals, dealing with predators, pork production & breeding, the decline in quality of industrial pork, beef production and breeds, grass vs grain-fed beef, old-time animal trailing, 4-H fairs and auctions, slaughterhouse labor shortages, food economics & cultural norms, super CSA's, soil health & livestock, generational knowledge, and much...
Apr 29, 2021•1 hr 1 min
Jamie Wheal talks to Jim about his new book, Recapture the Rapture: Rethinking God, Sex, and Death in a World That's Lost Its Mind. They talk about the world losing its mind & the meaning crisis, the pros & cons of modernism, the danger & dynamics of rapture ideologies, alignment beyond agreement, dehumanization, commonalities of political poles, hyper-capitalist incentives & impacts, social media & free speech, idealizing fame, victimization, post-modernism vs wokeism, movin...
Apr 26, 2021•1 hr 52 min•Season 1Ep. 123
Daniel Schmachtenberger & Jim talk about his newly launched project, The Consilience Project. They start by covering some background for the project: why start it, primary focuses, cultural renaissance, the role of education & press, eroding knowledge commons, rapidly changing culture & scales, and learning from history. They then talk about the project's approaches & strategies: bottom-up problems-solving processes, understanding externalities, identifying core problems, content...
Apr 22, 2021•1 hr 26 min
Ashley Colby & Jim start this episode by talking about her book, Subsistence Agriculture in the US: Reconnecting to Work, Nature and Community. They cover Gemeinschaft vs Gesellschaft, Dual Process Theory, bottom-up change, arriving at paradox & the purist failure, creating social capital, food producer demographics & insights, modern industrial alienation, the value of shadow structures, the urban chicken movement, subsistence agriculture motivations, practical environmentalism, &am...
Apr 19, 2021•1 hr 18 min•Season 1Ep. 122
Joanne Goldblum & Colleen Shaddox talk to Jim about their book, Broke in America: Seeing, Understanding, and Ending U.S. Poverty. They cover the "give a man fish" fallacy, poverty quicksand, two vs one-parent households, nurture vs nature, poverty's impact on children, poverty definition & demographics, rural vs urban poverty, water access issues & pricing, malnutrition, low-cost food plan, time poverty, National Diaper Bank Network, affordable housing & zoning laws, building cod...
Apr 12, 2021•1 hr 30 min•Season 1Ep. 121
James Ehrlich & Jim continue their conversation on ReGen Villages. They cover smart houses in dumb neighborhoods, defining smart, what COVID exposed about cities, ReGen Village dynamics & their permacultural core, rural jobs, UBI, rural regulatory challenges, village funding & costs, electric self-sufficiency approach, media & making ReGen Villages sexy, protecting villages with kindness, ReGen Villages status & progress, and more.
Apr 08, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Season 1Ep. 120
Max Borders & Jim continue their last conversation on his book, After Collapse: The End of America and the Rebirth of Her Ideals. They cover fully automated luxury communism, utilizing traditional economics & markets, Elinor Ostrom's commons, institutional experimentation, post-scarcity economics, Joseph Pine's experience economy, bottom-up collaboration, masculine & feminine, eros & thanatos, the law of flow, Holacracy, limitations of electoral democracy, state secession, cellul...
Apr 05, 2021•1 hr 15 min•Season 1Ep. 119
