The Valmy

Podcast: Uncommon Knowledge Episode: “Bibi: My Story,” Benjamin Netanyahu On His Life And Times | Peter Robinson | Hoover InstitutionRelease date: 2022-12-09Get Podcast Transcript →powered by Listen411 - fast audio-to-text and summarizationBenjamin Netanyahu is the past and soon to be again prime minister of Israel. In his new book, Bibi: My Story, Netanyahu describes how he went from an Israeli American high school student in Philadelphia to a member of the Israeli Defense Force, detouring along the way to study architecture and get a master’s degree from the MIT Sloan School of Management in 1976. His studies were interrupted when his brother Yoni was killed in the raid on Entebbe, Uganda, which inspired Bibi to return to Israel and dedicate his life to protecting that state. This interview covers those events as well as his rise to the top of Israeli politics—multiple times. Note to viewers: Be sure to watch to the end of the show after the end credits for some additional content that was shot after the interview concluded. 

Podcast: The Gray Area with Sean Illing Episode: Can effective altruism be redeemed?Release date: 2023-01-23Get Podcast Transcript →powered by Listen411 - fast audio-to-text and summarizationGuest host Sigal Samuel talks with Holden Karnofsky about effective altruism, a movement flung into public scrutiny with the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried and his crypto exchange, FTX. They discuss EA’s approach to charitable giving, the relationship between effective altruism and the moral philosophy of utilitarianism, and what reforms might be needed for the future of the movement.Note: In August 2022, Bankman-Fried’s philanthropic family foundation, Building a Stronger Future, awarded Vox’s Future Perfect a grant for a 2023 reporting project. That project is now on pause.Host: Sigal Samuel (@SigalSamuel, Senior Reporter, VoxGuest: Holden Karnofsky, co-founder of GiveWell; CEO of Open PhilanthropyReferences:  "Effective altruism gave rise to Sam Bankman-Fried. Now it's facing a moral reckoning" by Sigal Samuel (Vox; Nov. 16, 2022) "The Reluctant Prophet of Effective Altruism" by Gideon Lewis-Kraus (New Yorker; Aug. 8, 2022) "Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself" by Kelsey Piper (Vox; Nov. 16, 2022) "EA is about maximization, and maximization is perilous" by Holden Karnofsky (Effective Altruism Forum; Sept. 2, 2022) "Defending One-Dimensional Ethics" by Holden Karnofsky (Cold Takes blog; Feb. 15, 2022) "Future-proof ethics" by Holden Karnofsky (Cold Takes blog; Feb. 2, 2022) "Bayesian mindset" by Holden Karnofsky (Cold Takes blog; Dec. 21, 2021) "EA Structural Reform Ideas" by Carla Zoe Cremer (Nov. 12, 2022) "Democratising Risk: In Search of a Methodology to Study Existential Risk" by Carla Cremer and Luke Kemp (SSRN; Dec. 28, 2021)  Enjoyed this episode? Rate The Gray Area ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts.Subscribe for free. Be the first to hear the next episode of The Gray Area. Subscribe in your favorite podcast app.Support The Gray Area by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcastsThis episode was made by:  Producer: Erikk Geannikis Editor: Amy Drozdowska Engineer: Patrick Boyd Editorial Director, Vox Talk: A.M. Hall Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Podcast: 80,000 Hours Podcast Episode: #143 – Jeffrey Lewis on the most common misconceptions about nuclear weaponsRelease date: 2022-12-29Get Podcast Transcript →powered by Listen411 - fast audio-to-text and summarizationAmerica aims to avoid nuclear war by relying on the principle of 'mutually assured destruction,' right? Wrong. Or at least... not officially.As today's guest — Jeffrey Lewis, founder of Arms Control Wonk and professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies — explains, in its official 'OPLANs' (military operation plans), the US is committed to 'dominating' in a nuclear war with Russia. How would they do that? "That is redacted." Links to learn more, summary and full transcript. We invited Jeffrey to come on the show to lay out what we and our listeners are most likely to be misunderstanding about nuclear weapons, the nuclear posture of major powers, and his field as a whole, and he did not disappoint. As Jeffrey tells it, 'mutually assured destruction' was a slur used to criticise those who wanted to limit the 1960s arms buildup, and was never accepted as a matter of policy in any US administration. But isn't it still the de facto reality? Yes and no. Jeffrey is a specialist on the nuts and bolts of bureaucratic and military decision-making in real-life situations. He suspects that at the start of their term presidents get a briefing about the US' plan to prevail in a nuclear war and conclude that "it's freaking madness." They say to themselves that whatever these silly plans may say, they know a nuclear war cannot be won, so they just won't use the weapons. But Jeffrey thinks that's a big mistake. Yes, in a calm moment presidents can resist pressure from advisors and generals. But that idea of ‘winning’ a nuclear war is in all the plans. Staff have been hired because they believe in those plans. It's what the generals and admirals have all prepared for. What matters is the 'not calm moment': the 3AM phone call to tell the president that ICBMs might hit the US in eight minutes — the same week Russia invades a neighbour or China invades Taiwan. Is it a false alarm? Should they retaliate before their land-based missile silos are hit? There's only minutes to decide. Jeffrey points out that in emergencies, presidents have repeatedly found themselves railroaded into actions they didn't want to take because of how information and options were processed and presented to them. In the heat of the moment, it's natural to reach for the plan you've prepared — however mad it might sound. In this spicy conversation, Jeffrey fields the most burning questions from Rob and the audience, in the process explaining: • Why inter-service rivalry is one of the biggest constraints on US nuclear policy • Two times the US sabotaged nuclear nonproliferation among great powers • How his field uses jargon to exclude outsiders • How the US could prevent the revival of mass nuclear testing by the great powers • Why nuclear deterrence relies on the possibility that something might go wrong • Whether 'salami tactics' render nuclear weapons ineffective • The time the Navy and Air Force switched views on how to wage a nuclear war, just when it would allow *them* to have the most missiles • The problems that arise when you won't talk to people you think are evil • Why missile defences are politically popular despite being strategically foolish • How open source intelligence can prevent arms races • And much more.Chapters:Rob’s intro (00:00:00)The interview begins (00:02:49)Misconceptions in the effective altruism community (00:05:42)Nuclear deterrence (00:17:36)Dishonest rituals (00:28:17)Downsides of generalist research (00:32:13)“Mutual assured destruction” (00:38:18)Budgetary considerations for competing parts of the US military (00:51:53)Where the effective altruism community can potentially add the most value (01:02:15)Gatekeeping (01:12:04)Strengths of the nuclear security community (01:16:14)Disarmament (01:26:58)Nuclear winter (01:38:53)Attacks against US allies (01:41:46)Most likely weapons to get used (01:45:11)The role of moral arguments (01:46:40)Salami tactics (01:52:01)Jeffrey's disagreements with Thomas Schelling (01:57:00)Why did it take so long to get nuclear arms agreements? (02:01:11)Detecting secret nuclear facilities (02:03:18)Where Jeffrey would give $10M in grants (02:05:46)The importance of archival research (02:11:03)Jeffrey's policy ideas (02:20:03)What should the US do regarding China? (02:27:10)What should the US do regarding Russia? (02:31:42)What should the US do regarding Taiwan? (02:35:27)Advice for people interested in working on nuclear security (02:37:23)Rob’s outro (02:39:13)Producer: Keiran HarrisAudio mastering: Ben CordellTranscriptions: Katy Moore

Podcast: Odd Lots Episode: Ex-Logger Aims to Beat Elon Musk in Electric TrucksRelease date: 2023-01-16Get Podcast Transcript →powered by Listen411 - fast audio-to-text and summarizationWhile electric vehicle use is growing rapidly, the internal combustion engine remains completely dominant in the world of heavy trucks. At some point in the future, Tesla has a plan to commercialize an electric semi, but nobody really knows when. Meanwhile, other entities are looking to compete in the world of industrial vehicles. Chace Barber is a former trucker in the logging industry, which has some very different characteristics than the type of freight trucking you typically see on a highway. When you're driving over the Rocky Mountains, without easy proximity to mechanics, tow trucks or service stations, you need power and reliability. His company, Edison Motors, is building its own trucks with a hybrid diesel-electric approach that it sees as a better path forward. On this episode, we discuss the challenges of hauling logs, as well as how it's possible for a small entity to get in the game of building such large industrial equipment.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Release date: 2023-01-13Notes from The Valmy:Source: YouTube https://youtu.be/ZzV7ty1DW_c Release date: 2022-12-15Get Podcast Transcript →powered by Listen411 - fast audio-to-text and summarization

Podcast: 80,000 Hours Podcast Episode: #141 – Richard Ngo on large language models, OpenAI, and striving to make the future go wellRelease date: 2022-12-13Get Podcast Transcript →powered by Listen411 - fast audio-to-text and summarizationLarge language models like GPT-3, and now ChatGPT, are neural networks trained on a large fraction of all text available on the internet to do one thing: predict the next word in a passage. This simple technique has led to something extraordinary — black boxes able to write TV scripts, explain jokes, produce satirical poetry, answer common factual questions, argue sensibly for political positions, and more. Every month their capabilities grow. But do they really 'understand' what they're saying, or do they just give the illusion of understanding? Today's guest, Richard Ngo, thinks that in the most important sense they understand many things. Richard is a researcher at OpenAI — the company that created ChatGPT — who works to foresee where AI advances are going and develop strategies that will keep these models from 'acting out' as they become more powerful, are deployed and ultimately given power in society. Links to learn more, summary and full transcript. One way to think about 'understanding' is as a subjective experience. Whether it feels like something to be a large language model is an important question, but one we currently have no way to answer. However, as Richard explains, another way to think about 'understanding' is as a functional matter. If you really understand an idea you're able to use it to reason and draw inferences in new situations. And that kind of understanding is observable and testable. Richard argues that language models are developing sophisticated representations of the world which can be manipulated to draw sensible conclusions — maybe not so different from what happens in the human mind. And experiments have found that, as models get more parameters and are trained on more data, these types of capabilities consistently improve. We might feel reluctant to say a computer understands something the way that we do. But if it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, we should consider that maybe we have a duck, or at least something sufficiently close to a duck it doesn't matter. In today's conversation we discuss the above, as well as: • Could speeding up AI development be a bad thing? • The balance between excitement and fear when it comes to AI advances • What OpenAI focuses its efforts where it does • Common misconceptions about machine learning • How many computer chips it might require to be able to do most of the things humans do • How Richard understands the 'alignment problem' differently than other people • Why 'situational awareness' may be a key concept for understanding the behaviour of AI models • What work to positively shape the development of AI Richard is and isn't excited about • The AGI Safety Fundamentals course that Richard developed to help people learn more about this field Get this episode by subscribing to our podcast on the world’s most pressing problems and how to solve them: type 80,000 Hours into your podcasting app. Producer: Keiran Harris Audio mastering: Milo McGuire and Ben Cordell Transcriptions: Katy Moore

Podcast: Dwarkesh Podcast Episode: Nadia Asparouhova - Tech Elites, Democracy, Open Source, & PhilanthropyRelease date: 2022-12-15Get Podcast Transcript →powered by Listen411 - fast audio-to-text and summarizationNadia Asparouhova is currently researching what the new tech elite will look like at nadia.xyz. She is also the author of Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software.We talk about how:* American philanthropy has changed from Rockefeller to Effective Altruism* SBF represented the Davos elite rather than the Silicon Valley elite,* Open source software reveals the limitations of democratic participation,* & much more.Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here.Timestamps(0:00:00) - Intro(0:00:26) - SBF was Davos elite(0:09:38) - Gender sociology of philanthropy(0:16:30) - Was Shakespeare an open source project?(0:22:00) - Need for charismatic leaders(0:33:55) - Political reform(0:40:30) - Why didn’t previous wealth booms lead to new philanthropic movements?(0:53:35) - Creating a 10,000 year endowment(0:57:27) - Why do institutions become left wing?(1:02:27) - Impact of billionaire intellectual funding(1:04:12) - Value of intellectuals(1:08:53) - Climate, AI, & Doomerism(1:18:04) - Religious philanthropy Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe

Podcast: Future of Life Institute Podcast Episode: Anders Sandberg on the Value of the FutureRelease date: 2022-12-29Get Podcast Transcript →powered by Listen411 - fast audio-to-text and summarizationAnders Sandberg joins the podcast to discuss various philosophical questions about the value of the future. Learn more about Anders' work: https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction 00:54 Humanity as an immature teenager 04:24 How should we respond to our values changing over time? 18:53 How quickly should we change our values? 24:58 Are there limits to what future morality could become? 29:45 Could the universe contain infinite value? 36:00 How do we balance weird philosophy with common sense? 41:36 Lightning round: mind uploading, aliens, interstellar travel, cryonics

Podcast: Dwarkesh Podcast Episode: Bethany McLean - Enron, FTX, 2008, Musk, Frauds, & VisionariesRelease date: 2022-12-21Get Podcast Transcript →powered by Listen411 - fast audio-to-text and summarizationThis was one of my favorite episodes ever.Bethany McLean was the first reporter to question Enron’s earnings, and she has written some of the best finance books out there.We discuss:* The astounding similarities between Enron & FTX,* How visionaries are just frauds who succeed (and which category describes Elon Musk),* What caused 2008, and whether we are headed for a new crisis,* Why there’s too many venture capitalists and not enough short sellers,* And why history keeps repeating itself.McLean is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair (see her articles here and the author of The Smartest Guys in the Room, All the Devils Are Here, Saudi America, and Shaky Ground.Watch on YouTube. Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or your favorite podcast platform.Follow McLean on Twitter. Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes.Timestamps(0:04:37) - Is Fraud Over?(0:11:22) - Shortage of Shortsellers(0:19:03) - Elon Musk - Fraud or Visionary?(0:23:00) - Intelligence, Fake Deals, & Culture(0:33:40) - Rewarding Leaders for Long Term Thinking(0:37:00) - FTX Mafia?(0:40:17) - Is Finance Too Big?(0:44:09) - 2008 Collapse, Fannie & Freddie(0:49:25) - The Big Picture(1:00:12) - Frackers Vindicated?(1:03:40) - Rating Agencies(1:07:05) - Lawyers Getting Rich Off Fraud(1:15:09) - Are Some People Fundamentally Deceptive?(1:19:25) - Advice for Big Picture Thinkers Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe

Podcast: 80,000 Hours Podcast Episode: #112 – Carl Shulman on the common-sense case for existential risk work and its practical implicationsRelease date: 2021-10-05Get Podcast Transcript →powered by Listen411 - fast audio-to-text and summarizationPreventing the apocalypse may sound like an idiosyncratic activity, and it sometimes is justified on exotic grounds, such as the potential for humanity to become a galaxy-spanning civilisation.But the policy of US government agencies is already to spend up to $4 million to save the life of a citizen, making the death of all Americans a $1,300,000,000,000,000 disaster.According to Carl Shulman, research associate at Oxford University's Future of Humanity Institute, that means you don’t need any fancy philosophical arguments about the value or size of the future to justify working to reduce existential risk — it passes a mundane cost-benefit analysis whether or not you place any value on the long-term future.Links to learn more, summary and full transcript. The key reason to make it a top priority is factual, not philosophical. That is, the risk of a disaster that kills billions of people alive today is alarmingly high, and it can be reduced at a reasonable cost. A back-of-the-envelope version of the argument runs: • The US government is willing to pay up to $4 million (depending on the agency) to save the life of an American. • So saving all US citizens at any given point in time would be worth $1,300 trillion. • If you believe that the risk of human extinction over the next century is something like one in six (as Toby Ord suggests is a reasonable figure in his book The Precipice), then it would be worth the US government spending up to $2.2 trillion to reduce that risk by just 1%, in terms of American lives saved alone. • Carl thinks it would cost a lot less than that to achieve a 1% risk reduction if the money were spent intelligently. So it easily passes a government cost-benefit test, with a very big benefit-to-cost ratio — likely over 1000:1 today. This argument helped NASA get funding to scan the sky for any asteroids that might be on a collision course with Earth, and it was directly promoted by famous economists like Richard Posner, Larry Summers, and Cass Sunstein. If the case is clear enough, why hasn't it already motivated a lot more spending or regulations to limit existential risks — enough to drive down what any additional efforts would achieve? Carl thinks that one key barrier is that infrequent disasters are rarely politically salient. Research indicates that extra money is spent on flood defences in the years immediately following a massive flood — but as memories fade, that spending quickly dries up. Of course the annual probability of a disaster was the same the whole time; all that changed is what voters had on their minds. Carl expects that all the reasons we didn’t adequately prepare for or respond to COVID-19 — with excess mortality over 15 million and costs well over $10 trillion — bite even harder when it comes to threats we've never faced before, such as engineered pandemics, risks from advanced artificial intelligence, and so on. Today’s episode is in part our way of trying to improve this situation. In today’s wide-ranging conversation, Carl and Rob also cover: • A few reasons Carl isn't excited by 'strong longtermism' • How x-risk reduction compares to GiveWell recommendations • Solutions for asteroids, comets, supervolcanoes, nuclear war, pandemics, and climate change • The history of bioweapons • Whether gain-of-function research is justifiable • Successes and failures around COVID-19 • The history of existential risk • And much moreChapters:Rob’s intro (00:00:00)The interview begins (00:01:34)A few reasons Carl isn't excited by strong longtermism (00:03:47)Longtermism isn’t necessary for wanting to reduce big x-risks (00:08:21)Why we don’t adequately prepare for disasters (00:11:16)International programs to stop asteroids and comets (00:18:55)Costs and political incentives around COVID (00:23:52)How x-risk reduction compares to GiveWell recommendations (00:34:34)Solutions for asteroids, comets, and supervolcanoes (00:50:22)Solutions for climate change (00:54:15)Solutions for nuclear weapons (01:02:18)The history of bioweapons (01:22:41)Gain-of-function research (01:34:22)Solutions for bioweapons and natural pandemics (01:45:31)Successes and failures around COVID-19 (01:58:26)Who to trust going forward (02:09:09)The history of existential risk (02:15:07)The most compelling risks (02:24:59)False alarms about big risks in the past (02:34:22)Suspicious convergence around x-risk reduction (02:49:31)How hard it would be to convince governments (02:57:59)Defensive epistemology (03:04:34)Hinge of history debate (03:16:01)Technological progress can’t keep up for long (03:21:51)Strongest argument against this being a really pivotal time (03:37:29)How Carl unwinds (03:45:30)Producer: Keiran HarrisAudio mastering: Ben CordellTranscriptions: Katy Moore