This week, Daniel chats about technology, governance and culture with Samuel Hammond, senior economist for the Foundation for American Innovation, a think tank focused on bridging the cultures of Silicon Valley and DC. Additionally, Sam has an outstanding substack where he writes about topics surrounding AI development & regulation, as well as the history and future of liberalism, secularism and pluralism.
Topics include:
The day-to-day of working in a think tank
What it means to bridge the cultural divide between Silicon Valley and DC
The real American power centers (New York (finance/media), Texas (energy), Silicon Valley (tech) and how Hollywood has always been subservient
What it means to embrace pluralism in terms of values, morals and ontological frameworks, and the benefits of such beliefs
How to apply the theory of The Second Best to ones general worldview: “when it is infeasible to remove a particular market distortion, introducing one or more additional market distortions may lead to a more efficient outcome”
The evolution of liberalism has evolved as a response to periods of extreme conflict (The 30 Years War, for instance)
Debating whether or not crisis is essential for generating new equilibria in society
Accelerationism and capitalism as a general intelligence
Path dependency and historical development
Exploring scenarios about what happens if AI scaling laws breakdown
Predictions about AI’s impact on regime change and the rise of AI-native institutions
Can open source AI keep up? Why it’s important that they keep trying, despite the widening performance gap
Why Sam isn’t worried about children adapting to technological change
The coming return of Neo-Medieval societal structures
Completing the system of Canadian Idealism
Artwork: Edward Hicks, “Peaceable Kingdom”, 1844-1846