CSPI Podcast

Romina Boccia is the director of budget and entitlement policy at the Cato Institute, where she writes about government spending, the debt problem, and entitlement reform. She also has a Substack called the Debt Dispatch that you can subscribe to here. Romina joins the podcast to discuss available paths to deal with the coming entitlement crisis. One potential way to get politicians out of making tough choices is to create a debt commission that takes responsibility for unpopular reforms. Romina has written about using the model of the BRAC commission, which was relied on to close down military bases at the end of the Cold War.The conversation also touches on the politics of debt, how policymakers are thinking about these issues, Paul Ryan as an unappreciated hero of our time, and much more. Near the end, Romina reflects on her career as a DC policy-wonk, and why she is motivated to help ensure that America continues to be the land of opportunity. If we don’t get entitlements under control, it could potentially degrade our entire way of life. For more discussion on this topic and the difficult choices our leaders will soon be facing, see the previous CSPI podcast with Brian Riedl. Listen to the podcast with Romina here or watch the video on YouTube. Get full access to Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology at www.cspicenter.com/subscribe

Brian Chau writes and hosts a podcast at the From the New World Substack, and recently established a new think tank, the Alliance for the Future.He joins the podcast to discuss why he’s not worried about the alignment problem, where he disagrees with “doomers,” the accomplishments of ChatGPT versus DALL-E, the dangers of regulating AI until progress comes to a halt in the way it did with nuclear power, and more. With his background in computer science, Brian takes issue with many of those who write on this topic, arguing that they think in terms of flawed analogies and know little about the underlying technology. The conversation touches on a previous CSPI discussion with Leopold Aschenbrenner, and the value of continuing to work on alignment. Brian’s view is that AI doomers are making people needlessly pessimistic. He believes that this technology has the potential to do great things for humanity, particularly when it comes to areas like software development and biotech. But the post-World War II era has seen many examples of government hindering progress, and AFF is dedicated to stopping that from happening with artificial intelligence. Listen to the conversation here, or watch the video here. LinksDonate to AFFAFF manifestoBrian on diminishing returns to machine learning, and discussing AI with Marc AndreessenVaswani et al. on transformersLimits of current machine learning techniques Get full access to Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology at www.cspicenter.com/subscribe

Historian Andrew Roberts discusses Napoleon's reign, free trade as a cause of war, and Napoleon's personal magnetism. Topics also include Napoleon's relationship with Josephine, his military prowess, and the inaccuracies in the film 'Napoleon' directed by Ridley Scott.

Brian Riedl, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and Richard Hanania discuss the financial future of the US, with a focus on entitlements. They explore the projected fund shortages of Social Security and Medicare, the potential consequences of borrowing money indefinitely, and the lack of seriousness in fiscal policy. The speakers highlight the challenges of raising the payroll tax limit, the inefficiency of Twitter, and the ongoing debt ceiling negotiations.

Niklas Anzinger is the founder and General Partner of Infinita, the first Próspera-based VC fund, which invests in founders overcoming regulatory capture in crypto, biotech and hardware through network states and startup cities. He’s also one of the 100 or so residents of Próspera.This was quite an optimistic conversation. The title of the podcast comes from the last thing Niklas said, which was that you don’t actually need attention or to talk about grand projects, but just to show the world what you can do. Niklas is part of the charter city movement, which seeks to build hubs of innovation and progress while bringing the rule of law and economic development to poorer regions of the world. In this eventful conversation, Richard and Niklas touch on* The mechanics of governance in Próspera* Getting around red tape and becoming a hub of medical innovation* Amenities and quality of life in the city* Upcoming conferences and eventsDespite a new government in Honduras that is hostile to charter cities, Niklas is optimistic that they will be able to continue operating. He and Richard also talk about potential medical breakthroughs that Próspera might help bring about, like bacteria that remove cavities from your mouth, and a currently available gene therapy that may make your muscles and bones stronger.LinksNiklas on X, his Substack, RSS for his podcastThe Ultimate Guide to PrósperaAlex Ugorji on XPróspera websiteCiudad MorazánInfinita ManifestoScott Alexander on Próspera, Part I and Part IIMark Lutter on the CSPI podcastMarc Andreessen, The Techno-Optimist ManifestoDocumentary on medical tourism in Próspera; DW report, with appearance from NiklasUpcoming EventsNov 3-5: Crypto Futurism & Legal Engineering 2023 - A Próspera Builders’ SummitNov 17-19: DeSci & Longevity Biotech 2023 - A Próspera Builders' Summit Jan 6-Mar 1: Vitalia - Starting the Frontier City of Life Get full access to Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology at www.cspicenter.com/subscribe

Chris Rufo joins the podcast to talk about his new book, America's Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything.Rufo begins by talking about his background and his theory of political change. The conversation then shifts to his new book, the strengths of Ron DeSantis as an administrator, and finally what he’s doing on the board of the New College of Florida. Topics include:* Where did all of the crazy ideas that seem to have taken over institutions in the last few years come from? * What took conservatives so long to wake up to the problem?* Did Rufo end up liking the intellectuals he was studying?* What are the connections between left-wing ideas and civil rights law?* How do conservatives reach “good liberals” within institutions?See the transcript of the conversation at the Richard Hanania Newsletter.Listen in podcast form or watch the conversation on YouTube.Links:* Richard Hanania, The DeSantis Revolution* Politico profile on the relationship between Rufo and DeSantis* Rufo, America's Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything.* Rufo video on the trans movement and “nullification” surgery, discusses his theory of political change* Hanania, The Origins of Woke (forthcoming book)* Robert Rector on black-white gaps* The Atlantic giving Rufo his due Get full access to Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology at www.cspicenter.com/subscribe

In the popular imagination, the AI alignment debate is between those who say everything is hopeless, and others who tell us there is nothing to worry about.Leopold Aschenbrenner graduated valedictorian from Columbia in 2021 when he was 19 years old. He is currently a research affiliate at the Global Priorities Institute at Oxford, and previously helped run Future Fund, which works on philanthropy in AI and biosecurity. He contends that, contrary to popular perceptions, there aren’t that many people working on the alignment issue. Not only that, but he argues that the problem is actually solvable. In this podcast, he discusses what he believes some of the most promising paths forward are. Even if there is only a small probability that AI is dangerous, a small chance of existential risk is something to take seriously.AI is not all potential downsides. Near the end, the discussion turns to the possibility that it may supercharge a new era of economic growth. Aschebrenner and Hanania discuss fundamental questions of how well GDP numbers still capture what we want to measure, the possibility that regulation strangles AI to death, and whether the changes we see in the coming decades will be on the same scale as the internet or more important. Listen in podcast form here, or watch on YouTube.Links:* Leopold Aschenbrenner, “Nobody’s on the Ball on AGI Alignment.” * Collin Burns, Haotian Ye, Dan Klein, and Jacob Steinhardt, “Discovering Latent Knowledge in Language Models Without Supervision.” * Kevin Meng, David Bau, Alex Andonian, and Yonatan Belinkov, “Locating and Editing Factual Associations in GPT.”* Leopold’s Tweets: * Using GPT4 to interpret GPT2 .* What a model says is not necessarily what’s it’s“thinking” internally. Get full access to Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology at www.cspicenter.com/subscribe

Bryan Caplan joins the podcast to talk about his new book, Voters as Mad Scientists: Essays on Political Irrationality.Bryan begins by explaining why he hates politics. Much of the conversation then centers around Caplan’s simplistic theory of the right and left. This is compared and contrasted with Scott Alexander’s thrive/survive theory of the political spectrum, Robin Hanson’s theory of farmers and foragers, and Hanania’s “Liberals Read, Conservatives Watch TV.”Near the end, the discussion turns to the political climate at GMU, and whether the intellectual community that has been built can survive the trend towards DEI. Caplan emphasizes that he has noticed a difference since Glenn Youngkin came to power in Virginia, showing that politics actually matters for determining the future of free speech and intellectual freedom.For previous Bryan appearances on the podcast, see: May 2021, September 2022, and May 2022.Listen in podcast form or watch on YouTube. Get full access to Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology at www.cspicenter.com/subscribe

This week we’re rereleasing a previous episode with Marc Andreessen, originally released on August 16, 2021. He is co-founder and general partner of Andreessen Horowitz. Earlier in life, he was the co-founder of Opsware, Ning, and Netscape. Marc joins the podcast to talk about what’s gone wrong with science, the prerequisites for progress, and how tech has changed our lives and has the potential to disrupt stagnant institutions. Topics also include how the internet has influenced dating, what venture capitalists actually do, and whether there is too much – or too little – money in politics.For a transcript of the conversation, see here. Get full access to Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology at www.cspicenter.com/subscribe

Robin Hanson joins the podcast to talk about the AI debate. He explains his reasons for being skeptical about “foom,” or the idea that there will emerge a sudden superintelligence that will be able to improve itself quickly and potentially destroy humanity in the service of its goals. Among his arguments are:* We should start with a very low prior about something like this happening, given the history of the world. We already have “superintelligences” in the form of firms, for example, and they only improve slowly and incrementally * There are different levels of abstraction with regards to intelligence and knowledge. A machine that can reason very fast may not have the specific knowledge necessary to know how to do important things.* We may be erring in thinking of intelligence as a general quality, rather than as more domain-specific.Hanania presents various arguments made by AI doomers, and Hanson responds to each in kind, eventually giving a less than 1% chance that something like the scenario imagined by Eliezer Yudkowsky and others will come to pass. He also discusses why he thinks it is a waste of time to worry about the control problem before we know what any supposed superintelligence will even look like. The conversation includes a discussion about why so many smart people seem drawn to AI doomerism, and why you shouldn’t worry all that much about the principal-agent problem in this area.Listen in podcast form or watch on YouTube. You can also read a transcript of the conversation here.Links:* The Hanson-Yudkowsky AI-Foom Debate* Previous Hanson appearance on CSPI podcast, audio and transcript* Eric Drexler, Engines of Creation* Eric Drexler, Nanosystems* Robin Hanson, “Explain the Sacred”* Robin Hanson, “We See the Sacred from Afar, to See It the Same.”* Articles by Robin on AI alignment:* “Prefer Law to Values” (October 10, 2009)* “The Betterness Explosion” (June 21, 2011)* “Foom Debate, Again” (February 8, 2013)* “How Lumpy AI Services?” (February 14, 2019)* “Agency Failure AI Apocalypse?” (April 10, 2019)* “Foom Update” (May 6, 2022)* “Why Not Wait?” (June 30, 2022) Get full access to Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology at www.cspicenter.com/subscribe