The Jim Rutt Show

Continuing his series of expert interviews on the Russia-Ukraine War, Jim talks with Timothy Clancy about forecasting the conflict through mid-May... Continuing his series of expert interviews on the Russia-Ukraine War, Jim talks with Timothy Clancy about forecasting the conflict through mid-May. They discuss five likely mid-game scenarios, Ukraine as a Go board, how urban combat has changed in the 21st century, the "belt" strategy, Grozny Rules, creating feral cities, Putin's unknown "maximum acceptable atrocity" limit, the danger of extreme swings in analysis, a quicksand strategy for Ukraine & why it could be good for the West, Ukraine as a risk to Putin's control of Russia, how Putin has provided a common point of unification for Ukraine & NATO, simulation factors for Ukrainian insurgency, overwhelming violence's galvanizing effects, the Goode ratio, limited usefulness of the historical record & unpredictability of new tech, the right level of international friction to avoid going up the escalation ladder, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS Currents 055: Paul Goble on Putin’s Strategic Mistakes JRS Currents 054: Samo Burja on the Russia-Ukraine War JRS Currents 052: John Robb on War in Ukraine InfoMullet (blog) InfoMullet (Twitter) Dialectic Simulations Timothy Clancy has an MSc from WPI in Insurgency Dynamics & Simulation Science. As a Ph.D. candidate, he is preparing to defend his dissertation on the life-cycle of violence and instability of non-state actors as a complex system of studied simulations. His published research includes a simulation model of ISIS in Syria and Iraq and another of violent radicalization leading to terrorism as a social contagion. Timothy runs a blog, InfoMullet.com or @InfoMullet on Twitter or Facebook, that provides more context for complex current events. Through the InfoMullet he’s tracked regional conflicts relevant to the current Russian invasion as far back as the Second Chechnyan war through Georgia, Syria, Libya, and most recently Armenia v. Azerbaijan. He also provides focused coverage on uprisings and non-state actor conflict including EuroMaidan protest movements which 8 years ago this February led to the collapse of the Yanukovych regime, Russian annexation of Crimea, and the start of the Russo-Ukrainian war in 2014. His consulting firm Dialectic Simulations Consulting helps clients ranging from Fortune 1000 to government agencies and military commands solve some of their toughest problems with simulations.

Jim has a talk with Julyan Davey inspired by Julyan's essay series "Weaving a Non-Dual Civilisation"... Jim has a talk with Julyan Davey inspired by Julyan's essay series "Weaving a Non-Dual Civilisation." They discuss the "sublimewe" modality as a means of shifting into a GameB mindset, incorporating the intersubjective world into our models, interweaving inner & outer work, initiation camps for the GameB paradigm, a non-Jungian application of the shadow, how GameA dynamics self-perpetuate, questioning the primacy of trauma, non-trauma reasons for taking on GameA value structures, methods for sharing value systems, an example case named Tim, cognitive defending, extractive intentionality, social influence & performativity, identifying with Instagram, violent infrastructure & Graeber's structural violence, 8 kinds of capital & how they get depleted, the inner engine of money-on-money return, transformative vs control culture, building sovereignty & coherence at the same time, admitting ignorance, the real possibility of GameB spaces, and much more. Episode Transcript "Weaving a Non-Dual Civilisation" (essay series),  by Julyan Davey Forrest Landry, "Aphorisms of Effective Choice" (PDF) "What is sublimewe?" Find out more about how to get involved in the sublimewe project here. The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy, by David Graeber Game-B.org "8 Forms of Capital," AppleSeed Permaculture "Shaping Transformative Cultures," by Julyan Davey Julyan is a writer and transformational facilitator whose work explores the cultural foundations necessary for a life-affirming human civilisation. He works with sublimewe, which is a we-space technology for facilitating a shift in culture within groups, as well as Possibility Management, which provides adulthood initiations to build a culture of responsibility. He has a background doing transformative conflict work in the social movement Extinction Rebellion, where he first confronted the need for a deeper cultural shift.

Continuing his series of expert interviews on the unfolding situation in Ukraine, Jim talks with Paul Goble, a longtime specialist on ethnic and religious issues in Eurasia... Continuing his series of expert interviews on the unfolding situation in Ukraine, Jim talks with Paul Goble, a longtime specialist on ethnic and religious issues in Eurasia. They discuss Putin's view of Russia as neglected & ignored, Russians' difficulty making ethnic distinctions between Ukrainian & Russians, Putin's unintentional unification of Ukraine & NATO, what Putin & most analysts got wrong about the military balance, Putin's misplaced faith in superior firepower, the ethnic makeup of the Russian military, why the backlash from the West was stronger than Putin expected, the West's unprecedented non-kinetic response to the invasion, effects & non-effects of the Western sanction regime, Russia's infosphere & increasingly closed internet, why Russian anti-war sentiment will increase, challenging bets against a continued Ukrainian resistance, Ukrainian resistance to the Soviet Red Army in 1945-1955, high effectiveness of low-tech resistance, Putin's coming claim of victory & why it would be Pyrrhic, what Putin would do in reaction to violence against him, the likelihood that NATO's increased coherence will continue, why China will probably not move on Taiwan in the near term, and much more. Episode Transcript Window on Eurasia (Paul's blog) "Putin’s Strategic Mistakes in Ukraine have Devastating Consequences for Russia, Pastukhov Says," by Paul Goble JRS Currents 054: Samo Burja on the Russia-Ukraine War JRS Currents 052: John Robb on War in Ukraine Paul Goble, a longtime specialist on ethnic and religious issues in Eurasia for the US government and US international broadcasting, currently blogs at Windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com. Prior to retiring from the US government in 2004, he worked in the intelligence community, the State Department and US international broadcasting. Since then, he has taught in Estonia at the University of Tartu and Audentes University in Tallinn, at the Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy in Baku, and the Institute of World Politics in Washington. The editor of eight volumes on ethnic and religious issues, he is the author of more than 100 articles and chapters and more than 1,000 op-eds in US and European publications. He has been decorated by the governments of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania for his work in promoting the restoration of Baltic independence. He lives in Staunton, Virginia, and can be reached at paul.goble@gmail.com.

Jim has a timely talk with Samo Burja about the Russian invasion of Ukraine and what it might mean moving forward... Jim has a timely talk with Samo Burja about the Russian invasion of Ukraine and what it might mean moving forward. They discuss the consequences of a (likely) Russian victory, Russia's bet on new arctic ports & liquid natural gas, a final decoupling of Russia from Europe, the stalemate scenario, Ukraine's dearth of young men, its remarkable job so far at maintaining morale, the likelihood of escalation of mass artillery & casualties, incompatibility between atomized individualism & willingness to resist, rational & less rational reasons why Russia hasn't taken out Ukraine's hospitals, power plants, and internet, a scenario in which Russia settles for Luhansk and Dinetzk, what a true Russian defeat would look like, significance of the Russian advance through Crimea, Samo's main critique of the Ukrainian government, the key fact that Russia has not yet used a third of their forces, the ineffectual negotations in Belarus, the always-looming risk of nuclear escalation & whether the nuclear taboo will hold, an unlikely escalation path via Polish involvement, why a strong German military would be bad for the EU, how a Russian victory would embolden China to invade Taiwan & China's tacit support of the Russian invasion, a bet between Jim & Samo on whether China invades Taiwan within the next 3 years, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS Currents 052: John Robb on War in Ukraine EP117 Samo Burja on Societal Decline EP125 Samo Burja on Societal Decline: Part 2 Currents 034: Samo Burja on the Consilience Project Samo Burja is the founder and President of Bismarck Analysis, a consulting firm that specializes in institutional analysis for clients in North America and Europe. Bismarck uses the foundational sociological research that Samo and his team have conducted over the past decade to deliver unique insights to clients about institutional design and strategy. Samo’s studies focus on the social and material technologies that provide the foundation for healthy human societies, with an eye to engineering and restoring the structures that produce functional institutions. He has authored articles and papers on his findings. His manuscript, Great Founder Theory, is available online. He is also a Research Fellow at the Long Now Foundation and Senior Research Fellow in Political Science at the Foresight Institute. Samo has spoken about his findings at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Y Combinator’s YC 120 conference, the Reboot American Innovation conference in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere. He spends most of his time in California and his native Slovenia.

Jim talks with Matthew Pirkowski about new frameworks in the study of emergence... Jim talks with Matthew Pirkowski about new frameworks in the study of emergence. They discuss the concept's roots in the work of J.S. Mill, 19th-century tensions between reductionism & vitalism, Terrence Deacon's ententional properties, ententionality as a result of constraints, giving reality status to relations, pruning rules as key to emergence, possibility space as unconstrained, chirality, spin glasses, viewing the Ukraine-Russia conflict in terms of preference regimes, communication speeds & emergence in the French Revolution, viscosity in political systems, Ilya Prigogine's dissipative structures, using waste as energy, emergence without emergencies, complexity catastrophe & viscosity, social media platforms as memetic reactors, race-to-the-bottom dynamics in social media, the possibility of non-trivial positivity within volatile online spaces, knowing communities by their fruits, grammars of differentiation vs grammars of integration, the project of synthesizing hyper-specialized languages, and much more. Episode Transcript Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter, by Terrence W. Deacon The Emergence of Everything: How the World Became Complex, by Harold J. Morowitz Emergence: From Chaos To Order, by John H. Holland "Adjacent Possible: A Talk with Stuart A. Kauffmann" The Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution, by Stuart A. Kauffman Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems: An Introductory Analysis with Applications to Biology, Control, and Artificial Intelligence, by John H. Holland JRS - Currents 051: Douglas Rushkoff on the Once and Future Internet JRS - Currents 049: Ashley Colby & Jason Snyder on Doomer Optimism Matthew Pirkowski works at the intersection of software, psychology, and complex systems. These interests first took root while studying Evolutionary Psychology and assisting with Behavioral Economic research at Yale's Comparative Cognition Laboratory. From there Matthew began a career in software engineering, where he applied these interests to the development of software interfaces used by millions around the world, most notably as a member of Netflix's Television UI team, where he worked on experimental initiatives conceptualizing and prototyping the future of entertainment software. Presently, Matthew consults on systems architecture, advises companies within the startup space, and writes about topics related to the evolution of human socioeconomic, technological, and representational systems–in particular the emergence and impact of cryptoeconomic protocols, as outlined in his Crypto Beyond Capitalism essay series. He spends most of his free time maintaining, restoring, and growing food on 6 recently acquired acres of Oregon woodlands.

Jim has a forward-looking talk with recurring guest John Robb about the meaning of Russia's invasion of Ukraine... Jim has a forward-looking talk with recurring guest John Robb about the meaning of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. They discuss the likelihood that the event is a major historical hinge, Russia & China's different rule set, costs & benefits of strong national cohesion, Putin's hard-power intentions, short-term unfolding of the Russian campaign, likely effects on China's relations with Taiwan, whether modern societies are willing to engage in insurgency, Putin's legacy drive, Russia's trajectory going forward, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS Currents 042: John Robb on Afghanistan Withdrawal JRS Currents 021: John Robb on Jan 6th, 2021 JRS Currents 005: John Robb on Protest Tactics & Reforms JRS Extra: Memetic Warfare & Pandemic Responses with John Robb JRS Extra: Key COVID-19 Decisions with John Robb John is an author, inventor, entrepreneur, technology analyst, astro engineer, and military pilot. He’s started numerous successful technology companies, including one in the financial sector that sold for $295 million and one that pioneered the software we currently see in use at Facebook and Twitter. John’s insight on technology and governance has appeared on the BBC, Fox News, National Public Radio, CNBC, The Economist, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and BusinessWeek. John served as a pilot in a tier-one counter-terrorism unit that worked alongside Delta and Seal Team 6. He wrote the book Brave New War on the future of national security, and has advised the Joint Chiefs of Staff, NSA, DoD, CIA, and the House Armed Services Committee.

Jim talks with Douglas Rushkoff about where the internet came from, where it might go, & how to move from dystopian despair to productive engagement... Jim talks with Douglas Rushkoff about where the internet came from, where it might go, & how to move from dystopian despair to productive engagement. Loosely following the syllabus for (Re-)Designing the Internet, a course Douglas co-teaches at CUNY with Jeff Jarvis, they discuss the internet as a read-write medium, reclaiming control of attention, journalism's move to Substack, language as VR, the Sixties dream of a thriving unimind, Allan Kaprow's creation of happenings, the DIY pre-internet, the shift from shareware to for-profit tech, John Perry Barlow's "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace," how net libertarianism created a free zone for corporate capture, the move from helping people find exploits to finding exploits in people, tuning interfaces for or against reactivity, the early internet as a place where people sounded smarter than in real life, the meaning of human-centered design, the value of viscosity in political & communication systems, denaturalizing design choices, the increasing evidence that the kids aren't alright, Facebook's Meta pivot as an act of desperation, how web 3.0 & blockchain technologies reify predatory speculation, Canadian banks' recent suspension of truckers' accounts, distributed tech's discovery problem, certain web communities as "Graeberian prisons of structural violence," the potential for affirming the best in one another, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS EP 6 - Douglas Rushkoff on Memetics, Money + TeamHuman Team Human podcast Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity, by Douglas Rushkoff  The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure, by Jonathan Haidt & Greg Lukianoff The Well The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, by Shoshana Zuboff JRS EP52 - Steven Levy on Facebook: The Inside Story Named one of the “world’s ten most influential intellectuals” by MIT, Douglas Rushkoff is an author and documentarian who studies human autonomy in a digital age. His twenty books include the just-published Team Human, based on his podcast, as well as the bestsellers Present Shock, Throwing Rocks and the Google Bus, Program or Be Programmed, Life Inc, and Media Virus. He also made the PBS Frontline documentaries Generation Like, The Persuaders, and Merchants of Cool. His book Coercion won the Marshall McLuhan Award, and the Media Ecology Association honored him with the first Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity. Rushkoff’s work explores how different technological environments change our relationship to narrative, money, power, and one another. He coined such concepts as “viral media,” “screenagers,” and “social currency,” and has been a leading voice for applying digital media toward social and economic justice. He a research fellow of the Institute for the Future, and founder of the Laboratory for Digital Humanism at CUNY/Queens, where he is a Professor of Media Theory and Digital Economics. He is a columnist for Medium, and his novels and comics, Ecstasy Club, A.D.D, and Aleister & Adolf, are all being developed for the screen.

Jim talks with Greg Lukianoff, president & CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) and co-author, with Jonathan Haidt, of The Coddling of the American Mind... Jim talks with Greg Lukianoff, president & CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) and co-author, with Jonathan Haidt, of The Coddling of the American Mind. They discuss FIRE's mission of non-partisan free speech advocacy, recent high-profile cases & repeat offenders in higher-ed censorship, the history of university speech codes, the concept of harm, problems of progress, lack of viewpoint diversity in higher ed, bad-faith uses of harm-claiming, understanding the scale of modern censorship, free speech as a foundational value of Western civilization, Georgetown professor Ilya Shapiro's recent controversial tweet, abuse of the white supremacy label, overemphasis in progressive circles on the morality of inoffensiveness, what the 1969 Barbara Papish case reveals about decreased support for free speech, lack of leadership among university presidents, the Alumni Free Speech Alliance, what parents can do to help children understand the importance of free speech, counterintuitiveness of free speech rights, and more. Episode Transcript theFIRE.org The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure, by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff  Olympics ad with Enes Kanter Freedom Freedom from Speech, by Greg Lukianoff MIT Free Speech Alliance JRS Currents 045: Dorian Abbot on Protecting Academic Freedom "What does MIT stand for? Faculty, alumni want answers." (theFIRE.org) The Chicago Statement "Five ways university presidents can prove their commitment to free speech," by Greg Lukianoff The University of Austin "Is the University of Austin Just a PR Stunt?" - The Argument podcast, NY Times Alumni Free Speech Alliance Greg Lukianoff is an attorney, New York Times best-selling author, and the President and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). He is the author of Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate, Freedom From Speech, and FIRE’s Guide to Free Speech on Campus. Most recently, he co-authored The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure with Jonathan Haidt. This New York Times best-seller expands on their September 2015 Atlantic cover story of the same name. Greg is also an Executive Producer of Can We Take a Joke?, a feature-length documentary that explores the collision between comedy, censorship, and outrage culture, both on and off campus. Greg has been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, and numerous other publications. He frequently appears on TV shows and radio programs, including the CBS Evening News, The Today Show, and NPR’s Morning Edition. In 2008, he became the first-ever recipient of the Playboy Foundation’s Freedom of Expression Award, and he has testified before both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives about free speech issues on America’s college campuses.

Jim talks with Gary Bengier about his science fiction novel Unfettered Journey, depicting a hard-science view of a possible world 140 or so years in the future... Jim talks with Gary Bengier about his science fiction novel Unfettered Journey, depicting a hard-science view of a possible world 140 or so years in the future. They discuss the need for sci-fi that addresses real problems & that is grounded in real science, the coming impact of bioscience, AI, & robotics, why robots may take longer to become ubiquitous than many think, Gary's sci-fi take on ubiquitous robots, a future of lots of stuff & not much human labor, what happens when robots make robots, capitalism's obsoletion point, neural chips, estimating AI progress, whether AGI is necessarily linked to consciousness, intentionality as the mark of mentality, the Fermi paradox, the novel's level-based social hierarchy, self-consciousness vs consciousness, symbol use, semantics (not syntax) as central to the human mind, the devil's offer of surveillance systems, reimagining the Adam & Eve story minus God, and much more. Episode Transcript Unfettered Journey, by Gary Bengier Unfettered Journey Appendices: Philosophical Explorations on Time, Ontology, and the Nature of Mind, by Gary F. Bengier Gary's appearance on the Santa Fe Institute's Complexity Podcast Game~B Film "Jobs lost, jobs gained: What the future of work will mean for jobs, skills, and wages" (McKinsey report)  The Chinese Room Argument (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)  If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens ... WHERE IS EVERYBODY?: Seventy-Five Solutions to the Fermi Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life, by Stephen Webb The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain, by Terrence W. Deacon "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences," by Eugene Wigner After a career in Silicon Valley, Gary pursued passion projects, studying astrophysics and philosophy. He’s spent the last two decades thinking about how to live a balanced, meaningful life in a rapidly evolving technological world. This self-reflective journey infuses his novel with insights about our future and the challenges we will face in finding purpose. Before turning to writing speculative fiction, Gary worked in a variety of Silicon Valley tech companies. He was eBay’s Chief Financial Officer, and led the company’s initial and secondary public offerings. Gary has an MBA from Harvard Business School, and an MA in philosophy from San Francisco State University. He has two children with Cynthia, his wife of forty-three years. When not traveling the world, he raises bees and makes a nice Cabernet at the family’s Napa vineyard. He and his family live in San Francisco.

Jim talks with Ashley Colby & Jason Snyder about the growing movement of Doomer Optimism... Jim talks with Ashley Colby & Jason Snyder about the growing movement of Doomer Optimism. They discuss Ashley's coinage of the term, doomer optimism as an open-source structure of feeling, avoiding pathologies of despair & naive optimism, balancing philosophy with action, cosmopolitan localism, healthy skepticism, theory-of-change pluralism, building local capacity toward the meso-scale, the social power of skill-building, Tucker Max's surprise embrace of the movement & what to do when movements take unexpected turns, doomer optimism's mainstream potential, recentering the hard-won knowledge of longtime homesteaders & builders, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS EP122 - Ashley Colby on Subsistence Agriculture Doomer Optimist Podcast Doomer Optimist Substack "A Journey to GameB," by Jim Rutt "The Liminal Web: Mapping An Emergent Subculture Of Sensemakers, Meta-Theorists & Systems Poets," by Joe Lightfoot Both/And Podcast "Doomer Optimism: What I See Coming, & How I'm Preparing," by Tucker Max Ashley Colby is an Environmental Sociologist who studied at Washington State University. In her book she explores subsistence food production as a potentially revolutionary act. She is interested in and passionate about the myriad creative ways in which people are forming new social worlds in resistance to the failures of late capitalism and resultant climate disasters. Ashley is a qualitative researcher, so she tends to focus on the informal spaces of innovation. She is now focused on doing anything she can to foment local, decentralized networks of people who can get us to the next iteration of society, and fast. Dr. Jason Snyder has an educational background in applied economics and geography, and is currently teaching in the Department of Sustainable Development at Appalachian State University with a special interest in local food systems. He is also a beginning homesteader in the Appalachian hills, a meditation enthusiast, a podcaster (Both/And, Doomer Optimism), and a proponent of societal transition towards a more resilient and regenerative system state.