Episode 12: Alexander Bard
This week Daniel and Chase are joined by Jack Ek and his friend, the legendary Alexander Bard, who describes himself as a “philosopher who writes f***ing books" and who is according to his Wiki: a Swedish musician, author, lecturer, artist, songwriter, music producer, TV personality, religious and political activist, one of the founders of the Syntheist religious movement, and member of the bands Army of Lovers & BWO, amongst numerous other projects. More recently, he cofounded a secret society called The Grey Robes, AKA the “Freemasons of Decentralization”.
We cover:
How Jack and Bard met through Euroburner culture
Is Bucharest the next Berlin? Or…can there never be a ‘next Berlin’
Property ownership as lynchpin for scene building
The secrets of disproportionate Swedish soft power
America as theater for the rest of the world
Lessons from Urbit: too Kantian
Philosophy’s role in engineering
Behavioral Economics and ‘Nudge Units’
The need for spirituality when grappling with the ramifications of AI
AI as a fundamentally truth seeking technology and therefore a threat to authoritarian governments
The devolution of the internet from Open and flat into a tribal, feudal dark forest.
Decentralization vs Centralization as the only important political axis
Navigating community building in a decentralized world (parallelize it)
Artwork: J.F. Clemens after Nicolai Abildgaard, “Ossian’s Swan Song”, 1787