Wokeness Unwrapped: Historical Context and Modern Implications

This episode is an accompaniment to my “tech right (disambiguation)” post from last week.

My guest today is my good friend Arjun Ramani. We've known each other since freshman year of Stanford when we got into a late night dorm argument about critical theory in high school debate (which says a lot about our friendship).

Arjun is currently a PhD candidate in economics at MIT. And for the last few years, he's been a correspondent for The Economist covering topics like finance, AI and India.

Among other things, we discuss:

* Mark Zuckerberg’s new look

* PG’s new essay on The Origins of Wokeness

* Why tech leaders admire Malcolm X and Robert Moses

* How 21st century billionaires differ from 20th century ones

* Non-Silicon-Valley reasons for R&D mania

* Growth rates in the US, India, and UK

* Buying the dip on effective altruism

* Cars as an analogy for AI impacts

* Why “human-like” AGI may be the wrong goal

Find a full edited transcript, a list of links/books, and more content on jasmi.news.