The One Hit Wonder Gerard

3min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

I don't want to paint Gerard as a political radical in either hyperprogressive or hyperreactionary, although I think he does have both sort of instincts. He himself, I think, better described as apolitical. But when you really press him, and also let me be clear, his intuitions of normativity are reactionary, progressive against modern Western philosophical assumptions. That's not to say he himself was against those, because those intuitions naturally lend towards progressivism or reactionary movements but there's also a way to smuggle that in into the good old liberal democracy.

Ahead of the release of the next episode of his lecture series on René Girard, Johnathan Bi returns for his second appearance on the show. He and Jim discuss Girard, prestige, innovation, AI, and much more. Enjoy! Important Links:

Show Notes:

The Girardian notion of prestige
What proof is there for mimesis?
The difference between mimesis and status signalling
Philosophical critiques of Girard
Girard on innovation
Historical understandings of innovation
A conversation between a pessimist and an optimist
AI, progress and the panopticon
Could we ban innovation?

Books Mentioned:

The Status Game: On Human Life and How to Play It; by Will Storr
The Alchemy of Finance; by George Soros
The Laws of Imitation; by Gabriel Tarde
When These Things Begin: Conversations with Michel Treguer; by René Girard
The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World; by David Deutsch
The Invention of Improvement: Information and Material Progress in Seventeenth-Century England; by Paul Slack
Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future; by Peter Thiel