Wisdom of Crowds

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.liveIs tech replacing humanity? Or is it sharpening the question of what it means to be human? What does it mean to live a good life — as opposed to passable life? What features of humanity become more important by contrast and necessity in the technological age? Is it possible to find a higher version of humanity in order to thrive?For this week’s episode — a live taping of Wisdom of Crowds — we invited Santi Ruiz to discuss these questions, and more. (Our other guest, Christine Rosen, unfortunately got sick in the last moment and had to cancel. We missed you, Christine!) Santi is Senior Editor of the Institute for Progress and edits Statecraft, a newsletter about public policy. But he is also an essayist and humanist who has written about culture and tech in his personal Substack, Regress Studies, as well as magazines like the American Conservative.Samuel Kimbriel and Damir Marusic interviewed Santi, with Damir taking on a more pessimistic view about the possibility of reconciling tech and the humanities, while Samuel remained open to optimistic scenarios.In our bonus section for paid subscribers, you will be able to listen to the audience Q&A, which includes questions about the End of History, the future of war, the British philosopher Nick Land, the future of coding, good versus bad friction, and an encounter between Good Santi and Evil Santi. Required Reading:* Santi Ruiz, “Technocapital is Eating My Brains” (Regress Studies). * The Statecraft newsletter.Wisdom of Crowds is a platform challenging premises and understanding first principles on politics and culture. Join us!

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.liveWe live in an increasingly weird world, where the weirdness is facilitated and accelerated by the Internet. We live in a world full of instantly-available bizarre pornography and terrorist attacks inspired by misanthropic ideologies whose manifestos are published online. Katherine Dee, an Internet ethnographer, writer and friend of Wisdom of Crowds, joins Christine Emba and Shadi Hamid to talk about the recent terrorist attack on an IVF clinic in California and Christine’s recent New York Times article about the social damage wrought by porn.Shadi shakes things up by posing a blunt question at the very beginning: Should we ban porn? It hurts men as well as women. Why not? Can we reconcile the ideals of liberalism with a state effort to suppress pornographic content? This question inspires Christine and Katherine to reflect about the ethics of sex work, the perils of reporting on dangerous and soul-crushing topics, as well as signs of hope in American culture.Throughout, Katherine applies her trusty reporter’s eye toward making an accurate, non-judgmental and perceptive account of what’s really going on with sex and ideology on the Internet. Christine, for her part, makes the case of norms and shame as useful tools for making society better. Shadi, in Socratic fashion, tests the strength of his interlocutors’ arguments.In the bonus section for paid subscribers, Katherine explains the nuances of “efilism” and “promortalism”; Shadi reflects on the meaning of suffering and how belief in God changes one’s approach to suffering; and Christine reflects on “cold, rational logical measure — suffering v. pleasure. Pleasure v. nothing.”Required Reading and Listening:* Christine Emba, “The Delusion of Porn’s Harmlessness” (New York Times). * Katherine Dee, “An Efilist Just Bombed a Fertility Clinic. Was This Bound To Happen?” (default.blog).* Katherine Dee, “The Nihilism of the Mass Shooter” (default.blog).* Katherine Dee, “The Trouble with Being Born” (default.blog).* Sophie Gilbert, Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves (Amazon). * Dan Savage on kinks (AV Club).* Andrea Dworkin, Pornography (Amazon). * XO Jane (Wikipedia). * “Supreme Court case on age limits for porn sites could affect 19 states” (Axios).* “Palm Springs IVF clinic bomber ID’d as Guy Edward Bartkus, a ‘pro-mortalist’ who opposed people being born ‘without their consent’” (New York Post).* Last week’s podcast: “How to Think about Power and Morality” (WoC).* Sin-eaters (Wikipedia).Free preview video:Full video for paid subscribers below:

As subscribers of Wisdom of Crowds will know, the war in Gaza has preoccupied Shadi Hamid for over a year now, and has taken a central place in his political thinking. Damir Marusic begins this episode by challenging Shadi on this point. Is he giving too much importance to one political and moral cause over all others? And is he giving too much importance to morality as such in geopolitics?The conversation eventually shifts when Damir tells Shadi that he is an “activist” when he writes in favor of a cause, and Shadi disagrees. Writers want to change the world, too, and that does not make them activists. Even Damir (Shadi argues) wants to change the world in some way with his writing. Even Damir has a preferred outcome. But Damir denies this: “My preferred outcome is that people recognize the world is fallen and irredeemable.” Instead, Damir says that it is precisely Trump’s “superpower” of being morally indifferent to norms and human rights that has, paradoxically, brought a few positive developments in the Middle East.This is a tense episode, one that digs deep into the psyches of both Shadi and Damir. “Then what?” Shadi retorts. “What’s the point of persuading people that the world is irredeemable?” Writing is just playing with words and power, Damir says. It’s “a slug trail I leave behind myself.”This episode cuts to the core of Shadi’s and Damir’s convictions, so we have made it free for all subscribers. You will not want to miss their conversation about Dresden, Hiroshima, Bucha, Trump and the Middle East, and more!Required Reading* Shadi’s essay, “I’m Not As Open-Minded As I Used To Be” (WoC).* Shadi’s new column, “A genocide is happening in Gaza. We should say so.” (Washington Post). * “Counting the dead in Gaza: difficult but essential” (The Lancet). * “Gaza will be entirely destroyed, Israeli minister says” (The Guardian). * Pankaj Mishra, “Unholy Alliances” (New Yorker). * Yglesias and Shadi exchange about Trump and the Middle East (X). * Damir’s Bucha essay (WoC).* “Trump announces US will stop bombing Houthis” (Politico) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wisdomofcrowds.live/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.liveOur special guest this week, David Polansky is a political theorist and commentator who lives in Canada. A frequent contributor to Wisdom of Crowds, he joins Shadi Hamid and Damir Marusic to discuss two excellent recent essays. The first one, titled “Does Canada Exist?” is about Canadian national identity, an issue that has become more relevant since Donald Trump has taken to calling Canada the 51st state, and while some in the western Canadian province of Alberta has floated the idea of seceding from the rest of Canada. Polansky’s article was quoted in the New York Times and National Post.David’s most recent peace, “Michael Jordan Yes; Winston Churchill No?” is about what makes politicians great and whether political greatness (in terms of impact) can be distinguished from moral goodness. After one hundred days of Trump, it is an important question to ask.What follows is a rollicking and often hilarious conversation in which various politicians — Justin Trudeau, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump — are sized up according to the standards of classical greatness and found wanting. Damir and Shadi nevertheless argue that Trump is the most consequential president since FDR. Polansky argues that Trump’s impact is in large part due to the fact that the Left is lost right now. It is lost, he argues, because it cannot create a new identity, and instead tries to forge unity around “niche issues,” like the Palestine question.In our bonus section for paid subscribers, the gang muses on Trump’s relationship to shame; Polansky distinguishes between courage and guts, and why Trump has the latter but not former; Shadi asks, “What do you think about Stalin?”; Damir explains why Trump is like a character in a science fiction novel; Polansky argues that “there’s a grandeur to America, but there’s also a ridiculousness to America”; Shadi interrogates Polansky on hierarchy and greatness; and the three men ponder whether Eisenhower was a great president.Required Reading and Viewing* David Polansky, “Michael Jordan, Yes; Winston Churchill, No?” (WoC).* David Polansky, “Does Canada Exist?” (WoC).* David Polansky, “Pundit Don’t Preach” (WoC).* David’s Substack, Strange Frequencies.* Where the “Worthwhile Canadian Initiative” meme comes from (Paul Krugman’s Newsletter). * “What to Know About Alberta’s Potential Separation From Canada” (TIME).* Carl Schmitt (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).* Chantal Mouffe on “agonistic” democracy (Pavilion).* Stephen Kotkin talk about Stalin (YouTube).* Isaac Asimov, the Foundation trilogy (Amazon).* “Trump says Houthis showed ‘bravery,’ believes they will honor truce deal” (Times of Israel).* Polansky’s “Cabots and Lodges” reference (Berkshire Edge).* Analysis of Bill Clinton’s 2012 DNC speech (CNN).Free preview video:Full video for paid subscribers below:

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.liveTrump has been in office for one hundred days, and Damir Marusic thinks America deserves him: “I do tend to intuitively see Trump and Trumpism as a correction on a social order that has lost its way and is somehow badly out of tune,” Damir wrote earlier this week. “Something is broken and unsustainable, and has been so for a while.”Christine Emba and Shadi Hamid have questions. Why is Damir still “ebullient” (his words) and “giddy” (also his words) about the current political situation? Why does Damir still believe that Trump is “a symptom, not a cause” of the nation’s problems? In response, Damir argues that “immigration and the war in Ukraine” are two of the issues that the Democrats were not addressing and that were unsustainable in the status quo.Shadi, for his part, feels much more appalled by Trump than he ever expected he would be, and is rediscovering is “left populist” roots. Christine offers an interesting couterfactual: “Not totally joking here … four to eight years of a sort of Kamala Harris-led Democratic party with, you know, a tech alliance could have eased us into sort of Brave New World-esque Soma-induced quiescence once AI had grown up a little bit and the Internet and mega-tech corporations were given even more power.”Ultimately, disagreements emerge: Christine believes that the Democrats, for all their faults, still follow the basics of rule of law — unlike Trump — and she argues that what Damir thinks of us a failed system might actually be, for most people, just the normal, mediocre running of a democracy. Shadi ponders the Great Man theory of history, and argues with Damir about whether history is determined or whether free will plays a role. In our bonus section for paid subscribers, Christine muses on the importance of TikTok in American politics; Damir utters the phrase, “nation of Trumps”; Damir argues that, without Trump, “by 2030 we’d be constitutionally in the same place”; Shadi argues that “postponing the inevitable seems good”; Christine muses on the theoretical reign of President Rahm Emmanuel; the gang discusses whether the GOP is an effective political party; and more!Required Reading:* Damir’s Tuesday Note: “We Deserve It All” (WoC).* “ ‘I never thought leopards would eat MY face,’ sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party.” (X).* Ross Douthat, “Donald Trump, Man of Destiny” (New York Times).* First Trump inaugural address (possibly written by Steve Bannon): “American Carnage” (White House Archives).* Pat Buchanan’s 1992 “Culture War” RNC convention speech (C-Span).* Joseph De Maistre, Considerations on France (Archive.org) * Second Lincoln inaugural address (Constitution Center).* “Fact Check: Did Biden Ignore Supreme Court Over Student Loan Forgiveness?” (Newsweek).* Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (Amazon). * Great Man theory of history (Wikipedia). Free preview video:Full video for paid subscribers below:

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.liveThis episode is a bit “meta”: it’s about what it means to keep an open mind, how to trust your conscience, why we should all avoid groupthink, and the phenomenon of “self silencing” — keeping your views to yourself when you’re afraid it might be too costly to say them out loud. But of course, this being Wisdom of Crowds, we link these meta-topics to the politics of the day. Jenara Nerenberg is a journalist, producer, speaker, and founder of the Neurodiversity Project, which hosts bestselling authors in the arts and sciences who push for “innovation in research and media.” In her work, Jenara applies insights from psychology and public health to question of free speech and the exchange of ideas. Her new book is titled, Trust Your Mind: Embracing Nuance in a World of Self Silencing. You can see why we are excited to have her on Wisdom of Crowds.“I don’t think that self silencing is inherently bad,” Jenara says, “but I think that we want everyone to be empowered to know that many people are conditioned to fall into self silencing and they’re not doing it consciously.” The goal is to help people become free thinkers. Instead, groupthink and ideology are the default for many people, because “people who are high in self uncertainty are drawn into something with clear boundaries and sense of belonging.” But if you want to think freely, you have to do the work.Shadi Hamid brings up politics. Where we wrong to focus so much on cancel culture on the Left, given the recent suppression of free speech on the Right? “Right has no respect for free speech, they were pretending,” Shadi says. “It was a pretext, they used the language of free speech as a cudgel.” Samuel Kimbriel agrees that the Right is using “the power of the sword” to suppress speech.Apart from the necessary political protection of speech, however, Jenara argues that free speech requires a particular disposition of personal character: “My book and my thinking are really about how do we see each other as human again? And that’s where we went wrong with this sort of excessive focus on labels and categories and check boxes.”In our bonus section for paid subscribers, Jenara talks about whether it’s possible to be emotionally attached to the principle of freedom of free speech and open inquiry (as opposed to a particular point of view); Sam discusses “infinite proceduralism” and why we need to accept the truth once it’s been identified; Jenara talks about growing up in a very unique San Francisco “bubble”; Shadi ponders when it is appropriate to cut people off whose opinions disturb you; and Jenara discusses gendered conversations and people-pleasing.Required Reading:* Jenara’s book, Trust Your Mind: Embracing Nuance in a World of Self-Silencing (Amazon). * Jenara’s initiative, the Neurodiversity Project (divergentlit).* “A Letter for Justice and Open Debate” (Harper’s).* “ ‘Have the courage to use your own understanding,’ is therefore the motto of the Enlightenment.” Immanuel Kant, “What is Enlightenment?” (Columbia).* Agnes Callard on keeping an open mind (New York Times). * Voltaire on free speech (The Guardian). * Ross Barkan, “How Anti-Woke Went Intellectually Bankrupt” (New York).* About Darryl Davis: “How One Man Convinced 200 Ku Klux Klan Members To Give Up Their Robes” (NPR).This post is part of our collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Governance and Markets.Free preview video:Full video for paid subscribers below:

Yoni Appelbaum, an American historian and staff writer at The Atlantic, discusses the themes from his book, 'Stuck,' which examines the barriers to the American dream caused by wealth consolidation and historical injustices like redlining. He shares insights on the erosion of social mobility and the role of zoning laws in marginalizing communities. The conversation explores how regulatory processes often favor the privileged, and offers hopeful solutions for making America more equitable, encouraging a balanced approach to economic and environmental challenges.

It’s been an exceptionally crazy week, even by Trump-era standards. So we decided to experiment with the podcast this week by doing a live-stream recording. Shadi Hamid and Damir Marusic discuss whether there is a method to Trump’s madness about tariffs and everything else — or whether we have to accept that we are ruled by a Mad King, who himself does not know what he will do from one moment to the next. It’s free for all subscribers, so give it a listen!Required Reading:* Shadi’s interview with Oren Cass about tariffs (Washington Post). * Janan Ganesh, “The Hopeless Search for Trump’s Cunning Plan” (Financial Times). This post is part of our collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Governance and Markets.Wisdom of Crowds is a platform challenging premises and understanding first principles on politics and culture. Join us! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wisdomofcrowds.live/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.liveIn 2012, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat published Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics, a book about how mainstream American religion was devolving into the prosperity gospel, superstitious cults and other forms of heterodox faith. Thirteen years later, the American religious landscape has changed, and Ross wrote a new book tackling a much more basic question: why you should be religious at all. He joins Damir Marusic and Shadi Hamid to discuss that book, which is titled Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious.This new book, Douthat says, “assumes a highly individualist culture” as its audience. This individualist culture is one where each person thinks of whether to believe in a god as a highly personal choice. The culture as a whole can no longer support any one person’s faith. The biggest individual challenge to Douthat’s thesis in this episode comes from Damir, who says: “I feel most religious people try to get through … happiness and/or meaning. I am not thirsting for those. I am not hungry for them. I feel I’m ok.” Douthat responds by posing a hypothetical: “Suppose you die and you’re summoned before the judgment throne of God and God says, ‘Seems like were friendly for arguments for being religious, you weren’t one hundred percent convinced, but still: why didn’t you go to church?’” Douthat argues that, while he himself is believing Catholic, there are nevertheless many “commonalities of religious experience. [World religions] are not all saying the same thing, but they are real and suggest something.” This makes common ground with Shadi who, as a Muslim, disagrees with Douthat about the divinity of Christ, but who, as a believer, agrees with Douthat that we should all be religious.In our bonus section for paid subscribers, Damir, Shadi and Ross talk about the philosophy of mind; whether AI will ever be conscious; what consciousness is for; whether Daniel Dennett is in hell; and why being lukewarm about whether God exists is a bad idea.Required Reading and Listening:* Ross Douthat, Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious (Amazon). * Damir Marusic, “A Lost Sense of Wonder” (WoC). * Nathan Beacom, “The Art of Hiking” (WoC). * John Lennon, “Imagine” (YouTube). * Daniel Dennett, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (Amazon). * Revelation 3:16: “So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth” (King James Version). This post is part of our collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Governance and Markets.Free preview video:Full video for paid subscribers below:

This week, we tried an experiment: a Substack live event! Matthew Gasda wrote a popular article about Romanticism, his contribution to an ongoing debate. Samuel Kimbriel had a few disagreements with Gasda’s piece. In the spirit of Wisdom of Crowds, we hosted our first-ever live-streamed Substack debate.It went pretty well! We hope to host more. By popular demand, here is a video recording of that debate. Please continue the discussion in the comments below!— Santiago Ramos, executive editorRequired Reading:* Matthew Gasda, “A Few Doubts About Neo-Romanticism” (WoC).* CrowdSource: “Hopeful Romantics” (WoC).* Ted Gioia, “Notes Toward a New Romanticism” (The Honest Broker).* Ross Barkan, “The zeitgeist is changing. A strange, romantic backlash to the tech era looms” (Guardian).Recommendations:Matthew Gasda: * Terence Malick, To the Wonder (YouTube).* Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther (Amazon). * Any biography of Goethe (Amazon). Samuel Kimbriel:* Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” (Poets.org). * Novalis, Hymns to the Night (Amazon). Santiago Ramos:* Ludwig von Beethoven, Piano Concerto Number 4, Second Movement (YouTube). Wisdom of Crowds is a platform challenging premises and understanding first principles on politics and culture. Join us! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wisdomofcrowds.live/subscribe